Princess of the Press

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Ida B. Wells was the first honoree of 2025 in the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters™ series (2022-25). In honor of Black History Month, the following article recognizes Wells’s achievements as an outspoken journalist, suffragist, and civil rights activist.

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Ida B. Wells was born to enslaved James and Lizzie Wells on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She was still a toddler when Union troops captured the area and she and her family were freed. After their emancipation, her father, who had been trained as a carpenter, founded a successful carpentry business and became involved in politics, and her mother was known for her excellent cooking. 

Education & Moving to Memphis

When she was 16 years old, a yellow fever epidemic killed hundreds of Holly Springs residents, including her parents and a younger brother. To support her surviving siblings and prevent them from being placed in foster homes, she began working as an elementary school teacher. With the help of her grandmother and other relatives and friends who took care of her younger siblings while she was working, she was able to keep the rest of her family together. Wells later moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with her two youngest sisters to live with an aunt. She continued to teach and took college classes during the summers.

On September 15, 1883, Wells was forcibly removed from a train when she refused to give up her first-class seat in the ladies car—a ticket she had purchased—and move to the smoking car where black passengers were expected to sit. She sued the railroad company and won the suit, but the railroad appealed the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Ultimately, the lower court’s ruling was overturned, and she was ordered to pay court costs.  

Budding Journalist

While continuing to teach elementary school, Wells began to write articles and editorials for local newspapers. Using the pen name “Iola,” she wrote weekly articles for The Living Way newspaper in which she attacked racist Jim Crow segregation laws. When she publicly criticized the school board and the conditions of the black schools in the area, her teaching contract was not renewed.

Wells became a full-time journalist and bought a share in the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, and she was later appointed its editor. She wrote about incidents of injustice and inequality, and her work was published nationally in black-owned newspapers. Wells earned the respect of her colleagues and was elected secretary of the black-run National Press Association in 1887. She became known as the “Princess of the Press.”  

Civil Rights Activism

When a friend of hers, a grocery-store owner, was killed by a violent mob led by a rival white grocer in 1892, Wells began to investigate and write about lynchings in the South. She additionally wrote anti-lynching commentaries and gave speeches about the gruesome acts, describing the killings as a “human holocaust” of black men, women, and children. The perpetrators were rarely prosecuted for the murders. She focused on the false accusations made against victims, and her anti-lynching editorials angered many in Memphis and the South. She and her friends and family were threatened, and the offices of her newspaper were set on fire and destroyed. 

It eventually became too dangerous for Wells to live in Memphis, and she fled to Chicago. She continued to write critically about lynchings and inequality under the pen name “Exiled.” She was invited twice to speak in England about the horrors of lynching, and international audiences were sympathetic to her cause. Wells was also a champion of women’s right to vote and cofounded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago. 

Family and Autobiography

Wells met a Chicago attorney and civil rights activist, Ferdinand Lee Barnett, when they were working on a pamphlet protesting the lack of black representation at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. They married two years later and had four children. Wells became aware of the inequality in Chicago’s educational system and established the city’s first kindergarten that prioritized black children. 

Wells began writing her autobiography in 1928 but never finished it. Her daughter, Alfreda Barnett Duster, worked on the book, and it was posthumously published in 1970 as Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.

American Women Quarters

The Ida B. Wells quarter shows her standing and facing forward. Her head and gaze are turned slightly to the right as she looks toward the future. She is wearing a dress with ruffles on the front and a jacket. A plain brooch is fastened to her collar, and her hair is in a loose bun. One of her hands is behind her and the other rests above the word RIGHTS.  The design is encircled by the legends UNITED STATES OF AMERICA above and JOURNALIST • SUFFRAGIST • CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST • 25 CENTS below. The motto E PLURIBUS UNUM and IDA B. WELLS are within an inner circle.  U.S. Mint Artistic Infusion Program designer Elana Hagler designed the reverse, and it was sculpted by Mint Medallic Artist Phebe Hemphill.

The obverse of the American Women Quarters bears Laura Gardin Fraser’s depiction of George Washington, designed as a candidate for the 1932 Washington quarter. Although John Flanagan’s design was chosen instead, Fraser’s was later used on the 1999 commemorative for the bicentennial of Washington’s death. It has been revived for use in the American Women Quarters.

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A version of this article appears in the February 2025 issue of The Numismatist (money.org).