Ida B. Wells Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a newspaper editor and journalist who continued to lead the American crusade against lynching. Working closely with both African-American community leaders and American suffragettes, Wells worked to raise gender issues within the "racial question" and racial issues within the "woman question." Wells was born the daughter of slaves in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. During Reconstruction, she studied at the Missouri Freedman's School, Rust University, and began teaching at the age of fourteen. In 1884 he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he continued to teach while attending Fisk University during summer sessions. In Tennessee, in particular, she was appalled by the poor treatment she and other African Americans received. After she was forcibly removed from her post for refusing to ride a "colored car" on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed her lawsuit against the railroad for violating her civil rights in 1877. This event and the legal fight that followed, however, encouraged Wells to continue to oppose racial injustice against African Americans. In addition to school teaching he took up journalism, and in 1891, after writing several newspaper articles critical of the educational opportunities offered to African American students, his teaching contract was not renewed. Effectively banned from teaching, she invested her savings in a part-inte...