PHOTOGRAPH © KAREN PULFER FOCHT
The word “SPEECH” is prominent in the sculpture of Ida B. Wells, crafted by Andrea Lugar.
It’s a tribute to Memphis Free Speech, the newspaper she co-owned and wrote for. It also signifies the power of speech, enshrined and protected in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
That freedom of speech was the weapon Wells wielded again and again to make the case against rampant injustices that crushed the lives and culture of Black Americans. Her devastating and powerful writings shined an unforgiving light on every element of a racist establishment, from the white mobs that embraced lynching to the corridors of power where Jim Crow laws and court rulings thrived.
Wells’ persistence and courage were honored on July 16, 2021 — her 159th birthday — with the unveiling of a life-sized statue at what is now called the Ida B. Wells Plaza at Beale and Fourth Streets.
In 1892, three Black businessmen who were friends of Wells were abducted and lynched. It shocked the city, but the white power structure in Memphis was uninterested in justice. Wells used the force of her pen, writing an editorial that said, “There is … only one thing left that we can do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.”
Many in the Black community did just that. Meanwhile, her editorials inflamed a white mob that destroyed the newspaper’s office and threatened her life. At age 30, she would take her own advice and leave the city for Chicago.
But she was not silenced. Until she died in 1931, she continued her activism, earning worldwide admiration. She also angered people. An FBI report called her a “dangerous negro agitator,” and her work was thwarted repeatedly by the government.
Still, she had the power of her writings, a body of work honored in 2020 with a Pulitzer Prize. She was unstoppable. And her resolve made her a giant in the civil rights movement.
