Go There To Know There

*photograph sourced from this site Born in Holly Springs,  Mississippi "just six months before Emancipation," Ida B. Wells would become one of the earliest and most outspoken advocates of human rights (Gates, et al.). Her father was politically-minded and considered himself a 'race man'; her mother, Elizabeth, who worked as a cook, strongly encouraged her children's educations. Ida would attend one of the Freedman Schools in Holly Springs until she was sixteen. After losing her parents to the Yellow Fever epidemic of the 1870s, young Ida was determined to keep what remained of her family together and supported her siblings on her meager teacher's salary. Her interest in racial politics in the South began with her outrage at the disparity between the salaries earned by white teachers (eighty dollars a month) compared to those of African American teachers (about thirty dollars a month). This concern, together with a determination to improve the education...