Changemaker 17: Ida B. Wells

Today's changemaker is Ida B. Wells. Born in Mississippi in 1862, Wells was a teacher, journalist, anti-lynching crusader, civil rights activist and suffragist who founded the National Association of Colored Women's Club and was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. As a journalist, she investigated lynching and contributed significantly to the anti-lynching movement. She toured Britain in 1893 and 1894 to promote the campaign against lynching, which led to the establishment of the London Anti-Lynching Committee.

After living in Memphis for ten years, she relocated to Chicago, where she resided for the rest of her life. She lived there with her husband, attorney Ferdinand Lee Barnett. In fact, their house, located at 3624 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, was added to the National Register of Historic Places and named a National Historic Landmark on May 30, 1974.

In 2020, Wells was awarded a Special Citation Pulitzer Prize posthumously "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."

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Photo credit: Chicago History Museum/Getty/1920