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Ida B. Wells: The Progressive Era

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In the time between the 1890s and 1920s, America experienced a massive amount of growth. People in poverty-stricken, overcrowded cities suffered greatly. In big cities, politicians kept power using several political machines. Companies created monopolies and controlled the nation’s economy. Many Americans were concerned about this, and believed that great change was needed in society to protect everyday people. As a result, these people, generally journalists, were called “reformers”. This reformative era was known as the Progressive Movement. However, through all the changes that were shaping America, one major group that was left untouched were the African Americans. African Americans suffered through many issues involving continual racism and segregation. To fight back against the racial immorality and crimes of lynching, lack of decent healthcare health care, education and housing and deprival of the political process, African-American women reformist, Ida B Wells proceeded to fight for equal rights for African Americans in the United States. Wells had an overarching effect on the progressive era as a whole by writing articles bringing lynching to light, protecting the rights of …show more content…

Wells was born a daughter to slaves in Mississippi. Six months after her birth their family was declared free through the Emancipation Proclamation. However they faced racial prejudices and discrimination. James Well, her father was a part of the Freedman’s Aid Society, which organized teachers from the North to teach in the schools in the South for African Americans free and their children. Along with starting up Shaw University, another school for freed blacks, this is where Wells received her early schooling but dropped out at the age of 16 when both of her parents and one of her siblings died due to yellow fever; this left Wells to take care of her other siblings. She landed a job as a teacher for a short while before beginning her career as a journalist and

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