Ida B. Wells was born here in July 1862 to enslaved parents, James and Lizzie Wells, in a house the builder Spires Boling finished around 1858. Boling held nine enslaved people, Lizzie and Ida among them, and James Wells helped build the house.
In September 1878 yellow fever killed her parents and an infant brother. Wells was 16, and she took a teaching job to keep her younger siblings together. She later moved to Memphis, where a jury awarded her $500 in 1884 after a railroad conductor dragged her from the ladies' car in 1883; the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the verdict in 1887. In March 1892 a mob took three of her friends, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and William Stewart, from the Shelby County Jail and shot them. She wrote against lynching in her newspaper, Free Speech, until a mob wrecked its office, and she never lived in Memphis again. Southern Horrors followed in 1892 and A Red Record in 1895.
The house is now a museum of African American history, art and culture, open since 2002, and a Mississippi Landmark since 2000. It stands on North Randolph Street, a short walk from Rust College, where Wells studied. Visits are by appointment, so call ahead.
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