Ida B. Wells
Storyboard Text
- One day in 1884, Ida B. Wells purchased a first-class train ticket to go from Memphis, TN to Nashville, TN.
- Wells refused to move to the back train cart and was forcibly removed by train staff.
- "I don't understand why I can't sit there, I paid for the ticket!"
- When she boarded, she was informed that she wan't allowed to sit in that section and had to go to a section designated for African Americans.
- From that day forward, Wells decided she would be an activist writing journals about race and politics in the South.
- "Rules are rules. Either sit down or you'll be kicked off."
- In 1892, she she turned her attention to anti-lynching after a friend and two of his business associates were unjustly murdered for defending their store.
- Wells wrote articles decrying the lynching and risked her own life traveling the south to gather information on other lynchings.
- One of her editorials pushed some of the city's whites over the edge and a mob stormed her newspaper office and destroyed all of her equipment. Wells was in New York at the time of the incident, which likely saved her life. She stayed in the North after her life was threatened and wrote an in-depth report on lynching in America for the "New York Age".
- On January 30, 1913 Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago.
- Work done by Wells and the Alpha Suffrage Club played a crucial role in the victory of woman suffrage in Illinois on June 25, 1913 with the passage of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Act.
- As president of the club, Wells was invited to march in the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC along with dozens of other club member.
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