Everyone is familiar with the story of Rosa Parks and her refusal to relocate to the back of the bus. It’s iconic and goes down in history as one of the pivotal moments of the Civil Rights Movement. What we weren’t taught about in our basic public school history class is the story of Ida B. Wells. In 1884 (71 years before Park’s event) Wells refused to move from her seat on a train for a white woman when the conductor asked her to. A couple of bites and scratches later, a gang of men removed her from the train. That kind of fight and determination dictated her journalism career. Wells, known as Iola Princess of the Press, strived to bring light to the truth about the lynchings in the south.
Ida B. Wells was not the only black woman journalist of her time. What made her different was her courage to not just write about woman’s issues but also about politics and race. She easily became a headliner writing under the name Iola to appeal to the common people and strengthen her connection to the south. Wells was one of the owners of Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and Free Speech. It wasn’t until three men, one of them being her friend Thomas Moss, from Memphis were lynched did she launch her anti-lynching campaign.
In the South, lynchings were thought to be the repercussion of raping white women. The truth is that an African American could be killed for being competition, for their interracial relationships or for just plain hatred. When Wells found out that Moss, a local business owner who was wrongly killed, she felt it was her responsibility to report about the sickening, hateful actions of the whites in the south.
Starting in Tennessee, Wells conducted her own research to expose the truth behind some of the brutal killings that were taking place. The result: whites burning down her office and pretty much saying that she couldn’t return to Memphis. Luckily Wells was in New York at the time and stayed put. She continued to write, releasing an in-depth report about lynching in America in the New York Age. The Princess of the Press also held lectures in the 1890s to round up support from whites. The anti-lynching campaign made its way to the White House in 1898 when she demanded for reforms to be made.
Her anti-lynching campaign caught on to black women’s groups, the NAACP, and other Civil Rights advocate groups. Wells was able to take something that she truly believed, the fact that lynching was a crime and should be stopped, and spread it to the public. That is ultimately what I, as a striving public relations professional could only hope to do with my future work.
Photo cred to Rejected Princesses
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