Black History Month

February is Black History Month and many movies, television shows and documentaries have been shown this month that are about the history of black men and women, their accomplishments and struggles.

Starting in 1619 slavers brought millions of Africans to the United States and sold. Slaves were in every part of the United States, but many think they were primarily in the South. As time wore on and cotton became the cash crop in the South, many hands were needed to do the labor intensive crop, cotton, or white gold as it was sometimes called.

Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in 1862 near Holly Springs, Miss. During Reconstruction her parents were active in the Republican party and her father helped start Rust College in Holly Springs. Ida attended Rust until she was 16 years old when her parents and a sibling died during a yellow fever epidemic.

She became the caretaker for her siblings and to make money she convinced a local school administrator that she was 18 years old and landed a teaching job to support her siblings.

In 1882, she moved to Memphis to get better pay and in alerting the population to the injustices against blacks that still existed including three black men who started a grocery in Memphis that competed with the white groceries. The three black men were lynched and their grocery burned.

She printed pamphlets about the lynchings and distributed them. Her stories in the local “Memphis Free Speech and Headlight” newspaper resulted in threats and burning the office and presses. She and her family fled to Chicago where she continued to write of the injustices and became one of the founders of the NAACP. She died March 25, 1931.

In 2021 she was finally recognized for her life’s work with a plaza and life size bronze statue on Beale Street in Memphis, Tenn.