Ida Wells was born a slave on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, to James and Elizabeth (Warrenton) Wells. The oldest in a family of four boys and four girls, she acquired from her parents a love of liberty and self-sufficiency that characterized her life.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett is one of eleven prominent Tennesseans depicted in the official Tennessee bicentennial portrait and one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). On March 25, 1931, in Chicago, at the age of 68, the ever-vocal "crusader for justice" was forever silenced.