After the death of her parents, Ida decided to take care of her four siblings. She began teaching school in order to provide for the family. Her monthly salary was $25.00. Ida's grandmother stayed with the children when she was away during the week. After a short while, her grandmother had a stroke and went to live with other relatives. When Ida's grueling schedule became too much, two of her aunts began taking care of her siblings.
Ida took a teaching job in Woodstock, Tennessee. On May 4, 1884, Ida rode the train to work. At that time, the Jim Crow law mandated that black and white passengers ride in separate cars. Defiantly, Ida rode in the car reserved for white passengers. When she refused to move, the train officials brutally forced her off the train. She sued the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad for discriminatory practices. Her first lawsuit was unsuccessful, because the railroad company had bribed her lawyer to lose the case. She hired another lawyer, and the circuit court reled the she had been wrongfully ejected from the railroad car. She was awarded five hundred dollars in damages. This was Ida's first step in a life spent crusading for justice.
In addition to teaching, Ida began writing a weekly column for the newspaper, "Living Way." In her first article, written on September 12, 1885, she criticized whites for discriminating against blacks and chastised blacks for not being more involved in eliminating segregation. She also wrote for other newspapers such as the "Indianapolis World," the "Chattanooga Justice," the "Detroit Plaindealer," and the "New York Age." Ida was fired by the Memphis school system after she wrote an article accusing the school administrators of not providing an adequate education for the black students. Now that she was not teaching Wells embarked on a journalism career full time. She became the publisher of the newspaper, "Free Speech." After nine months of running the paper, the "Free Speech's" circulation increased from fifteen hundred to four thousand.
In 1892, three black men were lynched, Ida's friend, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart. They were lynched because they operated a more successful grocery store than that of a white neighbor. Ida was incensed by the lynching and vowed to do something about it. She wrote an editorial about the murders, which read in part,
Go To Page: 1 2
