Lauren+-+pro+-+SP12

//Background Info://

//An African- American woman born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi where she was born into slavery. She then lost her youngest brother and both parents to yellow fever in the 1878 epidemic. She and her five other siblings were kept together only because Ida dropped out of Rust College and worked as a teacher in a black elementary school. When she started her job her wage was unfair and she developed a hatred for segregation and wanted more women’s rights. She ended up being one of the most important influences on modern civil rights and a founder of the feminist movements among African-American women in the 19th and 20th centuries.//

//The Problem://

//Ida was whole-heartily against racial and gander segregation. She was angry about false accusations of black men raping white women, the lynching that took place, and the treatment of her fellow women. She wanted to find ways to fix this national problem and wanted to show everybody that everybody was in fact equal.//

//The Solution://

//In Memphis Ida, as well as the African-American community, was treated horribly. After she refused to move from her train seat (years before Rosa Parks by the way…) and was forcefully moved into the “colored car” she sued the Chesapeake & Ohio railroad for violating her civil rights but the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected the suit in 1877. Although she was “defeated” this only encouraged Ida to continue the fight for racial and gender equality.//

//Ida took up journalism and wrote under the name of Iola in the black community paper called the Memphis Free Speech. In there she wrote about the devastation of lynching and encourage all the black men of the town to move out west. After several different entries about lynching her newspaper business was shut down.//

//She took her editorials to New York and continued to write about these issues. She joined a new newspaper company and became a pubic figure for anti-lynching societies made up of men and women of different races. She travelled throughout the U.S and even to England to gain a support system and to give a speech on anti-lynching.//

//Chicago’s rapidly growing African-American Community welcomed Ida’s ideas and encouraged her to write a full-length book on anti-lynching called The Red Record. In Chicago she organized two different activists groups. One was the National Association of Colored Women and the other was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.//

// "Digitization Projects Philologic Results." //Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project//. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. .//

// "Ida B. Wells, A Passion for Justice." //College of Staten Island Library//. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. .// // // // Schechter, Patricia A, and Ph.D.. "Ida B. Wells." //Illinois Historical Digitization Projects: Northern Illinois University Libraries//. Web. 29 Jan. 2012.