New Coin Celebrates the Living Legacy of Ida B. Wells

My great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells, was a very brave woman who spent almost fifty years writing, speaking, and working with organizations to help Black people and women gain more rights and be treated as first-class citizens. During her lifetime, she fought against segregation and intimidation that she and many others faced because of their race. In 1862, she was born into slavery in Mississippi during the Civil War, but she was lucky because she was freed as a result of the war. A few years later, her father could vote and have his own business and property. She grew up as the oldest of eight children with a lot of hope about what she could do with her life. After both parents died from disease when she was 16, she started teaching, and later after moving to Memphis, became a journalist, newspaper owner, and activist.

Her activism started early when Ida sued a railroad at age 22 for racial discrimination. She initially won the case only to have it overturned later. As a journalist, Ida often wrote about issues of race and politics in the South, and she lost her teaching job when she criticized the inequality between the segregated schools. In 1892, Ida began writing articles about lynching after three of her friends who owned a grocery store were murdered by a mob. Some white leaders in the town were so angry about the way she exposed the horrific details of the lynching that they threatened her life and encouraged a mob to destroy her newspaper office.

That didn’t stop her from speaking up. She moved from Memphis, Tennessee to New York City, then traveled to England, where she wrote and spoke about how violence against Black people in the South almost always went unpunished. She went to Chicago in 1893 to co-write and produce a pamphlet that was distributed at the World’s Fair. One of the other co-writers was Ferdinand L. Barnett. They married two years later and had four children together. She changed her last name to Wells-Barnett and continued to write more articles and pamphlets about lynchings and race riots with the hope that the violence would stop.

In addition to writing, she also got involved in several organizations to make life better for Black people and women. She founded the first kindergarten in Chicago for Black children. She co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also participated in the suffrage movement, founded the Alpha Suffrage Club to fight for women’s right to vote, and participated in the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC. During her lifetime she met with two different presidents—William S. McKinley and Woodrow Wilson—to fight for freedom and justice.

Ida B. Wells died in 1931 at the age of 68, only one year after her last brave act when she ran for state senate in Illinois. She did so many things in one lifetime—teaching, writing, and organizing—to make the world a fairer place. And now, over 100 years later, she is one of 20 women the United States Mint selected to honor in the American Women QuartersTM program. In this last year of the four-year program, she is honored along with Juliette Gordon Low, Dr. Vera Rubin, Stacey Park Milbern, and Althea Gibson. Her important work made a difference, and she is an inspiring person in American history.

I grew up hearing stories about my great-grandmother, and I always felt proud of how she fought for justice. She believed that everyone should have the same rights and chance to go to school, live in safe places, own businesses and property, and to vote—no matter what they looked like.

The life story of Ida B. Wells (later Wells-Barnett) will help people feel that one person can make a difference. The quarter with her image will remind all about how far we have come as a country and how important it is to speak up and do whatever is possible for everyone to have equal rights and opportunities.

By Michelle Duster, an educator, public historian, and activist whose advocacy has led to street names, monuments, historical markers, and other public history projects that add to the representation of African Americans and women. She is the author of several books including Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells and Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth about her paternal great-grandmother.

Further Reading:

Alfreda M. Duster, ed., Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, 2 ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

Mia Bay ed. Ida B. Wells: The Light of Truth-Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader (Penguin Books, 2014).

Linda O. McMurry. To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells (Oxford University Press, 1998).

Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Amistad Press, 2009).

Mia Bay, To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells (Hill and Wang, 2009).

Miriam Decosta-Willis ed The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells: An Intimate Portrait of the Activist as a Young Woman (Beacon Press, 1995).

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• Excluded from National Leadership, Black Women Were the Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement