Continuing my great-grandmother’s fight

MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER IDA B. WELLS WAS a suffragist. You probably have not heard her described this way before. She is most often honored for her journalism exposing lynchings in the South. To me, she is what great-grandmothers are to many: a teacher. From Ida, I learned that there is no end to a fight for justice. While most famous suffragists—Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt—ended their fight in 1920, Ida did not. She continued to push for Black women’s voting access for the rest of her life, and taught me lessons that I take into my fight for suffrage. I, too, am a suffragist, because in 2020 many Americans still do not have access to the vote.

I grew up hearing about Ida’s willingness to newspaper that her own life was threatened. She encouraged Black people to use what little power they had to protest, to boycott and ultimately to leave Memphis if they had the means to do so. She was not interested in being second in anything.