African-American Females

Ida B. Wells and her husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett had four children, Charles, Herman, Ida Jr. and Alfreda. They are pictured here in the early 1900s.

Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic.

Wells later became an anti-lynching advocate doing so as a journalist for several newspapers including her own. A civil rights activist, Wells was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.