Journalist, Founder of the Antilynching Campaign

Early Life.

Ida Bell Wells, the oldest of eight siblings, was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on 16 July 1862, during the Civil War. Her mother, Lizzie Wells, had been sold away from her mother at age seven and belonged to several owners before she arrived at Holly Springs to work as a cook for a carpenter named Boiling. While in Holly Springs, she met and married James Wells, who had been apprenticed to Boiling by his master, who was also his acknowledged father. After Lizzie and James Wells became free, they continued to work as cook and carpenter to Boiling.

Education.

Wells was educated at Shaw University (later Rust College), a freedman's school established in Holly Springs in 1866. After her parents and three siblings died of yellow fever in 1878, sixteen-year-old Ida Wells assumed responsibility for her family...