author
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
1862–1931
A fearless journalist and civil rights pioneer, she used reporting, pamphlets, and public speeches to expose the truth about lynching and racial injustice in America. Her work helped shape both the anti-lynching movement and the long struggle for Black civil rights and women’s suffrage.
4 Audiobooks
The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States
by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Lynch Law in Georgia
by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Mob Rule in New Orleans Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, Other Lynching Statistics
by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
About the author
Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an American journalist, educator, and activist whose life’s work challenged racial violence and discrimination. Reliable reference sources describe her as a leading figure in the anti-lynching movement and note that she became one of the early founders of the NAACP.
After working as a teacher, she turned to journalism in Memphis and began investigating the deadly violence facing Black Americans in the South. Her reporting and later pamphlets, including her anti-lynching work in the 1890s, brought national and international attention to crimes that many white newspapers and public officials ignored or excused.
She later lived in Chicago, where she continued writing and organizing for civil rights and women’s voting rights. Britannica also notes that she founded Chicago’s Alpha Suffrage Club, often described as one of the first Black women’s suffrage organizations in the city. Wells-Barnett died in 1931, but her writing and activism remain central to the history of American journalism and freedom movements.