Ida B. Wells – Teacher, Journalist, Activist
She successfully (1884) sued the Chesapeake Ohio Railroad after a conductor
ordered her from her paid first-class seat into a crowded, uncomfortable smoking
car. The ruling was overturned on appeal, to which she lamented, “There is no
justice in this land for us.”
Wells became an “antilynching crusader,” following the lynching of Thomas Moss, Wells’ godchild’s father and owner of the People’s Grocery. Moss, along with his two partners – Calvin McDowell and William Stewart – were arrested when the white owner of a competing store instigated a confrontation with law enforcement. A cabal of 75 mask-wearing white men dragged the three from the jail and killed them in cold blood.
Wells’ chronicled the heinousness of lynchings in her 1892 book, Southern Horrors, and subsequent publications. She called out the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white
women. “If Southern [white] men are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will
be very damaging to the reputation of their women,” she editorialized, prompting a white mob to destroy her Free Speech newspaper, and forcing her to leave Memphis.
Wells continued her anti-lynching campaign from New York and later Chicago. She
was one of the few Black women who marched in the Women’s Suffrage March in
1913, refusing the request of white suffragists to join the back of the march.
Wells Barnett was proudly “the thorn in the side of women’s and civil rights activists.” WEB DuBois deliberately excluded her from the founding meetings of the NAACP because she was perceived as “too radical.” The US government labeled her a “race agitator” during World War I.
Wells was finally awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 2020.
Recent Posts
Black Lives Matter Grassroots Stands with Twin Cities
We are grateful for the courage, vision, sacrifice, and power of Black Lives Matter Grassroots Twin Cities lead Chauntyll Allen, courageous comrade Nekima Levy Armstrong, and other principled organizers for their righteous resistance to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) federal invasion and fascist repression in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Rather than submitting to an unparalleled evil that murders mothers in their own vehicles, explodes chemical weapons upon infants, kidnaps and imprisons preschoolers, brutalizes children, separates families, and terrorizes communities, grassroots organizers in the Twin Cities are putting their own bodies, freedom and livelihood on the line to secure community.
The Murders of #KeithPorter and #ReneeGood by ICE Demonstrate the Depths of US Fascism and Why We Must Fight Harder to Be Free
On New Year’s Eve, as the world thirsted for celebration, Black father, son, neighbor, and community member, #KeithPorter stepped outside his front door to celebrate. Like many around the nation, he fired his gun in the air to celebrate the coming of 2026. An ICE agent who lived in the same complex moved as if Keith was no more than a target in a game. He went inside his own unit, put on his tactical gear, grabbed his ICE-issued firearm, stepped back outside, and shot this Black man dead in front of his own home.
Black Lives Matter Grassroots Statement on the U.S. Invasion of Venezuela
Black Lives Matter Grassroots vehemently condemns the United States’ military strikes on Venezuela, the unlawful kidnapping of President Nicholás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the threats against Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and the Venezuelan people. These actions have brought death and injury to civilians, desecrated the land and seas, and violated the nation’s sovereignty. Not only are these actions illegal according to international law and the United States Constitution, we know these to be war crimes and crimes against humanity.
