Born: July 16, 1862, Holly Springs, MS

Education: Mississippi Freedmen's School, Rust College, Fisk University

Died: March 25, 1931, Chicago, IL

Wells-Barnett was an antilynching and civil rights activist in dangerous times, when the South disfranchised, segregated, and terrorized blacks, and the nation treated them as second-class citizens.

Teacher and journalist, she wrote for Memphis, Tennessee church weeklies before becoming editor of the Free Speech. Her editorials, using the pseudonym Iola, were factual and defiant. Two, which denounced the murder of three black storeowners, angered whites and a mob destroyed the newspaper in 1892.

She fled to New York and a crucial role in the black freedom struggle. Reporting for the Age, she bared southern lynching and became internationally respected. Moving to Chicago, Wells-Barnett's journalism and activism intersected familial obligations, for example, raising six children. But she reported for Chicago's Conservator and joined the militant wing of the Afro-American Council. The council held its first annual meeting there in 1899. An outspoken anti-Bookerite, she was a founder of the NAACP but did not join the Chicago branch because of political differences with Du Bois. A noted community leader all the same, Wells-Barnett collected church, clubwomen, and other group petitions for a federal law against lynching and presented them to Congress. She also expressed the concerns of the “colored woman” in the national women's suffrage movement.