By Jaylen ScottWinter InternNew Journal and GuideIda B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent African American journalist and activist. She played a big part in the anti-lynching campaign in America, with a goal to find the real reason behind the lynchings of African Americans in the Jim Crow South. Despite her life being in danger numerous times, Wells stepped up to the plate and showed true bravery as a Black journalist, speaking out about the injustices that Black People were going through during this time, so that everyone could be informed about the true nature of lynchings.Wells was born on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, into slavery in the midst of the Civil War. She didn’t remember being enslaved due to being so young by the time the Civil war ended and slavery was abolished, but she has her parents’ stories and the marks on her mother’s back that allowed her to see the suffering that her parents and those like her experienced.She was the eldest of 8 children and was born to James and Elizabeth Wells, who, after slavery was abolished, learned how to read and became politically active during the Reconstruction period, which took place during most of Ida’s childhood. Her parents made sure to instill the importance of education to all of their kids, and she even attended Rust college before she moved on to become a teacher at the age of 14. Two years later, she would unfortunately learn that her parents and her youngest brother both died of yellow fever. With the remaining siblings left orphaned, she and her siblings moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she would take up a teaching job to help care for her family, as well as continue her own studies at Fisk University in Nashville.During this time, Wells, at age 22, would start to experience the beginnings of the Jim Crow Era of the South. In 1884, Wells filed a lawsuit against the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad company due to being kicked out of the first class train despite having bought a ticket. While winning her case, it was later revered in federal court, and 2 years later she would lose her teaching job after her contract wasn’t removed.It was here that she would have her footing in journalism, writing a few newspapers artifices under the pen name “Iola” and going into journalism full time. This would be the start of her beginning of making Black History, becoming the first female co-owner and editor of a Black Newspaper in the U.S after she bought a share in the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and was appointed as the editor.In 1892, Well’s friend Thomas Moss, who was a Memphis letter carrier and grocer, was lynched by a white mob. The event caused Wells to urge Black people to leave Memphis for their own safety. It also caused Wells to focus her attention on the causes and reasons given for the lynchings in her area, leading her to investigate the true reasons for these lynchings.She started to report her findings in the newspaper, and because of this, the residents of Memphis were enraged. A white mob ended up burning the press down, causing Wells