Education Equality

Advocating for Equal Rights: Ida B. Wells’ Responsibility to Expose Justice

Educational Equality

Ida B. Wells' work to make education equal shows that the right to education comes with the responsibility to challenge injustice.

Wells believed in equal education rights for Black Americans. As a teacher, she took on the responsibility of founding the Ida B. Wells Club in 1893 and helped open the first Black kindergarten in Chicago in 1897.

Her community was not initially supportive.

“They insisted that if we established a kindergarten in a colored district it would be drawing the color line, and would make it impossible for colored children to be accepted at the Armour Kindergarten. To say that I was surprised does not begin to express my feeling. Here were people so afraid of the color line that they did not want to do anything to help supply the needs of their own people.”

~Ida B. Wells, Crusade For Justice, 1970

Illustration of Bethel A.M.E. church in 1905, site of Wells' kindergarten.​​​​​​​

(Courtesy of Internet Archive)

 Jane Addams, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

(Courtesy of Columbia University)

In 1900, the Chicago Tribune published articles promoting school segregation, despite Chicago’s integrated system. Wells noted that no Black families were included and wrote a letter to the editor, which went unanswered. Determined, she visited the Tribune office and confronted the editor, who revealed racist views that went beyond education.

“He said that he did not believe that it was right that ignorant Negroes should have the right to vote and to rule white people because they were in the majority.”

~Ida B. Wells, Crusade For Justice, 1970

Wells wanted a group of white leaders to organize a boycott of the Tribune. She enlisted Jane Addams, who arranged a meeting with seven white leaders at Hull House in Chicago.

"I do not know what they did or what argument was brought to bear, but I do know that the series of articles ceased and from that day until this there has been no further effort made by the Chicago Tribune to separate the schoolchildren on the basis of race."

~Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice, 1970