Question

Why is Ida B. Wells viewed as one of Freedom's daughter's if she was not directly involved with what has been defined as the Civil Rights Movement? What were some of her significant contributions to the movement? Was she even aware that she was part of a movement?

Answer 1

Wells confronted a white train driver who told her to transfer from the ladies' section to the dark passenger portion after having acquired a first-class fare. As she resisted and the conductor attempted to forcibly push her. Wells charged after getting removed from the train and settled the lawsuit but the ruling was eventually overturned in court.

At the age Wells reached 25 she was the part owner and publisher of the small black publication, free expression and Headlight, a medium she used to skewer social injustice. Next came Lynching the folk's food store. She condemned it in print, fitted herself with a gun and spent months wandering alone in the South, documenting over 700 lynchings in the past decade.

Wells witnessed locations where people were hung, wounded, killed, burnt alive, submerged or mutilated. She stared at photographs of people dangling from trees while crowds glared at them, hammered local media reports, collected signed testimony from eyewitnesses and even employed private detectives on occasions.

They shattered the myths of the mass media that claimed lynching perpetrators were offenders – mostly white male abusers – who had only their rewards. Her findings found that abuse was not reported to have happened in two thirds of the lynchings, or was only claimed after revealing a secret, sexual, interracial partnership.

she was not directly involved in civil right movement but her activities contributed a lot