Google celebrates Ida B. Wells on her 153rd Birthday
July 16th 2015
While history shows us that Ida B. Wells as a famous anti-lynch activist, journalist, suffragist, sociologist and feminist, a lot of people don’t know or learn about her early life and the struggles she had to go through as a youth to accomplish what she did in her later years. Childhood is what shapes and teaches us what is wrong and what is right and few people do anything about it. Ida B. Wells had a pretty wild upbringing and it helped push her along through her life to become the well known journalist and cultural icon that she is today.
On July 16th, 1862, Ida was born into a family of slaves in Mississippi in the midst of the Civil War. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a cook. They were two slaves that fell in love and wanted to be together despite their bonding slavery and everything else going on in the world. But this war did not last much longer and after it was over, Ida’s father was invited to keep working for the white family, which he accepted. But they were no longer slaves. Education became the parents main focus, wanting to send Ida and her seven siblings to school. It was also when the truth of education came out, the slaves realized why they never got to learn anything like the white people they served. “Former slaves realized that education had been forbidden because it was a key to freedom and a source of white power.”[1]
Ida could barely remember when she first started her education, that’s how young she was. The earliest memory of her education was being able to read the newspaper for her family and friends during breakfast and her mother going to school with all the little kids and herself[2]. She could even remember learning to read the Bible. During the Reconstruction period, there were many small schools completely filled with children and not enough books to go around.
Her parents were very big influences in Ida’s life and the lives of her other siblings. Her father was a “race man”[3] He cared so much for the lives of the other African American people in Mississippi and across the world. He was also deeply interested in politics, although he never tried to run for office because he cared too much about trying to take care of his family and bringing home the bacon for them. Her mother was a deeply religious disciplinarian who cared nothing more than her children’s well beings. That included their education. She often went to Ida’s school to check up on their learning and would give them tasks while at home to further their learning process. She was very involved in their education, especially outside of the children’s school.
As soon as Ida reached her teen years, she was enrolled in Shaw University. It was a deeply Christian school. Students were required to go to daily mass, weekly prayer meetings and Church every Sunday. It was all very different than what Ida knew from her childhood and growing up in her home. Like most African-American schools, most of the teachers and faculty at Shaw university were white. The white female teachers greatly influenced Ida’s views on womanhood. Ida B. Wells described her time at Shaw University as the “my dark days”[4] in her life. She fell in love with a boy named James B. Combs. He was five years older and for reasons unknown broke up with her. But because of this, she wasn’t able to commit to just one man again for a very long time. Although, she did get married to fellow journalist Ferdinand Lee Barnett in 1895. Thanks to her fiery temper she also had a confrontation with President Hooper, who expelled her from the University because of it. But she was able to enroll in a new college to further her education.
Yellow Fever hit her homeland, and because of it, she lost both her parents and younger brother. Her siblings were young and on their own. So, she did the only thing she thought she could. She dropped out of school and made herself to look older than she was. So she could take care of her siblings herself. She managed to fake her age and take the teaching exam, which she passed, and made a living as a teacher to support her siblings at a school right down the street from where she lived.[5] She used got to use all that love and determination she learned from her parents to not only take care of herself, but to be there for her family and others in need. Can you imagine being sixteen years old, dropping out of school and taking care of five children?
Ida has had all these struggles in her life, but she persevered and was able to survive and thrive throughout her life because of these experiences and the things she’s learned. But she still kept that fiery temper of her. And she controlled and used it to become an anti-lynching activist that we know today.
[1] McMurry, Linda O.. To Keep the Waters Troubled : The Life of Ida B. Wells. Oxford UP, 2000. See page 8.
[2] Ibid. See page 9.
[3] Ibid. See page 11
[4] Ibid. See page 14
[5] Ritchie, Joy, and Ronald, Kate, eds. Pitt Comp Literacy Culture : Available Means : An Anthology Of Women'S Rhetoric(s). University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. See page 188.
