"Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so." -- civil rights activist, journalist and suffragette Ida B. Wells (7/16/1862 - 3/25/1931), from "On Lynchings."
Taking that as her mission, Wells was instrumental in exposing lynchings of black people in the post-Civil War South, in addition to their mistreatment as second-class citizens at best. After her pamphlet on lynching was printed in 1892, her Memphis, TN print shop was burned by a racist mob, forcing her to move to Chicago, where she was briefly mentored by Frederick Douglass. Wells also founded the National Association of Colored Women's Club, a black women's suffrage organization, and took part in the historic 1913 march on Washington, D.C. for women's voting rights, insisting on marching with the white women leading the march.
