LINDA O. MCMURRY

The lynchings of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart in March
1892 were not significant for their rarity--that year at least 158 other African
Americans were killed by angry mobs for alleged offenses against white society.
The location of the lynchings in Memphis, Tennessee, was also not remarkable;
seventeen other black Tennesseans were lynched that year and forty-six African
Americans had been killed in an 1866 race riot in Memphis. The three deaths
assumed a special importance mostly because of their impact on the young
journalist, Ida B. Wells. She knew all three men and was godmother to Moss's
daughter. Outraged by the murder of her friends, Wells mobilized her consid-
erable talents and energies to battle the evil of mob violence. Thus began the
perfect marriage of an individual and a cause.

Born to slave parents on 16 July 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells
was the eldest of seven children. In 1878 her parents, James Wells and Lizzie
Bell, and one sibling died in a yellow fever epidemic. Wells returned from Shaw
(later Rust) University and rejected plans to divide the remaining children among
friends and relatives. Instead, at the age of sixteen, she assumed responsibility
for her brothers and sisters and became head of the household. She began teach-
ing and eventually moved to Memphis, where she participated in the rich cultural
life of the black elite. There she might have led a conventional life but for her
temperament and a series of events.

The first event occurred on 4 May 1884, when a conductor asked Wells to
leave the ladies' car of a train. She refused, then bit him on the hand when he
sought to remove her forcibly, and finally sued the railroad. She won the suit,
lost it on appeal, and launched her career as a journalist and a firebrand. Wells
became a partner and editor of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight in
1889. She also taught until 1891, when she was dismissed after criticizing the

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