TBA Law Blog

TBA Law Blog

With a Pen, Ida B. Wells Fearlessly ‘Turned Disappointment into Determination’

Posted by: Kate Prince on Feb 26, 2021
News Type: Black History Month

Before she was known as a civil rights pioneer, Ida B. Wells was a plaintiff before the Tennessee Supreme Court in Chesapeake, Ohio & Southwestern Railroad Co. v. Wells, an 1884 case over discrimination on railroads. Wells sued the railroad after being violently forced to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and was awarded $500 after a Memphis jury returned a verdict in her favor. The case made headlines, but after the railroad appealed to the state Supreme Court, the justices unanimously reversed the decision and assessed $200 in court costs against Wells. Wells then “turned her disappointment into determination” and soon after purchased a Memphis newspaper and began a new career as a journalist. As one historian wrote, “despite the setbacks, the resistance initiated by Wells became a symbol of African-American resistance to the Jim Crow laws of the South.” Wells would go on to fearlessly investigate and expose lynching, advocate for education and women’s suffrage and battle against segregation laws. Read more on Wells’ case in Russell Fowler’s article, “Ida B. Wells at the Tennessee Supreme Court,” from the November 2015 issue of the Tennessee Bar Journal and more about her life and upbringing in “Ida B. Wells,” by David Hudson from the August 2018 issue.

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