Baby­girlz, do you know any sis­tas with fierce­ness that keep it real and stand up to injustice?

This month we take a moment to give props to a His­toric Hot Mama (HHM) who sued a racist com­pany, owned stock in every news­pa­per she worked for, and reported the truth.

She is the dynamic, out­spo­ken, and coura­geous, Ida B. Wells.

On July 16, 1862, Ida was born into slav­ery. When she was six months old, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion was signed and she was legally free.  When Ida was six­teen years old, her par­ents died of Yel­low Fever.  She was the old­est of seven chil­dren so Ida had to fig­ure out how to sup­port her fam­ily.  She was young, unmar­ried, and lit­er­ate, and known to have read all of the books in her town library. She decided to become a teacher in her com­mu­nity.  Ida had to front like she was older than she actu­ally was in order to go to a teacher’s train­ing college.

Ida demanded her rights. Imag­ine buy­ing a first class ticket to ride a train and then being told that because you were Black, you would have to give up your seat.  This hap­pened to Ida B. Wells and she refused to give up her seat. When the train stew­ard phys­i­cally picked her up out of her seat, she bit him on the hand.  She sued the train com­pany and won $500.  The racist Mem­phis Daily News­pa­per head­line read “Darky Damsel Gets Dam­ages”.  Unfor­tu­nately, the state supreme court over­turned the rul­ing.  She saw the power in the media and became a jour­nal­ist.  She was known in the Black com­mu­nity as the “Princess of the Press”.  Ida wrote under the pen­name Iola and owned stock in the news­pa­per com­pa­nies she worked for.

Some Black men in Ida’s neigh­bor­hood owned “The People’s Gro­cery Com­pany”.  There was a sit­u­a­tion where whites tried to take advan­tage of them and they did not give in, defend­ing their store with firearms.  The three men were put in prison and the local news­pa­pers told a story that blamed them.  Ku Klux Klan mem­bers stormed the jail and broke the men out mur­dered them.  This was to serve as a model for other Black peo­ple in the com­mu­nity on what was unac­cept­able behav­ior.  In other words, Black peo­ple were not sup­posed to stand up for them­selves.  Ida reported the truth about the law enforce­ment con­spir­ing with the KKK.

Ida also did research on the lynch­ings, or hang­ings of Black men, that were tak­ing place in the South.  Klans­men accused black men of rap­ing white women, and lynched them as a result.  Ida found that it was actu­ally more com­mon that white women par­tic­i­pated will­ingly in rela­tion­ships with Black men.

Although it was ulti­mately ben­e­fi­cial for the Black com­mu­nity to have a reporter who could give a black person’s per­spec­tive, her jour­nal­is­tic skills were not wel­comed by all.  Due to her inves­tiga­tive report­ing, she received death threats and her news­pa­per office was often van­dal­ized.  Ida had to move sev­eral times to pro­tect her life.  When Ida took on the topic of pub­lic edu­ca­tion and reported on the inequities, she ended up los­ing her teach­ing job.

She mar­ried Fer­di­nand Bar­nett, a lawyer and news­pa­per edi­tor. They had two boys and two girls. Ida passed at age 68.

So in honor of Ida B. Wells, baby­girlz, keep a jour­nal. Record events in your daily life that occur.