Description:Submitted by Paul Walker of Highgate Baptist Church
Ida B Wells (1861-1930), well-known in the USA, where a great deal has been written about her contribution to civil rights, is not well known in Britain despite her visits to Britain in 1893 & 1894 [1]. An African-American woman of great courage and conviction, she worked to bring to the crime of lynching to the attention of people in America and Britain through her journalism and public speaking. Known also as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, after she married African-American rights advocate Ferdinand Barnett, the couple published the Chicago Conservator newspaper and were considered pillars of the black community of Chicago where they were well known as leaders of the anti-lynching crusade.
Ida B. Wells was raised in Mississippi, went to Rust College and taught for a time in a school in Memphis, Tennessee. She became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech newspaper and in May 1892, in response to an article by her about a local lynching, a mob ransacked the paper’s offices and drove her out of town. She moved to Chicago where she continued to write about lynchings. Never afraid to get the facts right she would go directly to the site of a lynching, often despite extreme danger and report on events which people, even law-enforcement officers, wanted kept quiet. In 1895, she published A Red Record the first documented statistical report on lynching [2].
Ida Wells-Barnet was a founding member of the National Afro-American Council, served as its secretary, and was chairman of its Anti-Lynching Bureau. Wells was also a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She had several children, including Ida B. Wells, Jr. She was a powerful speaker, who captivated audiences with her personality and passion. She came to Britain on two occasions, 1893 for 3 months and 1894 for 6 months, during which she toured British cities, Birmingham amongst them [3].
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Over the next two pages you can read about further connections between Ida B. Wells and Birmingham. You can also view a local newspaper article printed while Wells was in the city.