News Summary

• Ida B.
• Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862.
• Her father was the son of a white man and his female slave and became a carpenter.
• Wells’ parents fought hard for Black political rights in Reconstruction and passed these values down to their daughter.
• In 1883, she bought a first class ticket to Woodstock on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad.
• The conductor ordered her back into the third-class car, a dirty, smoky coach where men smoked and often harassed women.