Vice President Kamala Harris and Michelle Duster.Photo: Alex Wong/Getty; Philip Dembinski
Ida B. Wells.Courtesy Ida B Wells Memorial Foundation
One Signal Publishers
Yes, my great-grandmother Ida B. Wells is known as a pioneering investigative journalist, newspaper editor and owner, suffragist, civil rights activist, social worker and more. To the world she’s an historic icon. But to me, she’s my grandmother’s mother. A strong, independent woman who waited until she was 33 years old — considered ancient in 1895 — toget married. Her husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett, was a widower with two children. Then she had four children — my grandmother, her youngest, was born when she was 42 years old. Harris married a divorcee with two children when she was 50, which is considered older in today’s times. Both married attorneys. Both were stepmothers. Both kept their maiden names. The former California senator kept the name Harris while my great-grandmother hyphenated hers to Wells-Barnett.
In addition to marrying attorneys who were feminists and doting husbands, both trailblazing women, born a century apart, were educated at Historically Black colleges and universities. Harris attended Howard University and Wells attended Shaw University (now Rust College) during the Reconstruction Era in her hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi, though her studies came to abrupt end when she was forced to drop out after her parents died.
Harris continued my great-grandmother’s unfinished anti-lynching work,quoting her on the Senate floorwhen she and fellow Sens. Cory Booker and Tim Scottintroduced legislationin 2019 to make lynching into a federal crime. Over a century ago, Wells met with Presidents McKinley and Wilson to discuss the same goal. Even though the law still has not passed, Harris and Wells are linked together in that quest for justice.
The civil rights icon.Courtesy Ida B Wells Memorial Foundation
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To help combat systemic racism, consider learning from or donating to these organizations:
- Campaign Zero (joincampaignzero.org) which works to end police brutality in America through research-proven strategies.
*ColorofChange.orgworks to make government more responsive to racial disparities.
source: people.com
