Ida B. Wells was a household name in Black America during much of her lifetime. The documentary Ida B. Wells - A Passion for Justice documents the dramatic life and troubled times of this gallant African American women. Through her time as a journalist and activist she lead and began an anti-lynching crusade after the Reconstruction period. As an African American civil rights leader, Ida B. Wells was born into slavery. During her time as a child it was against the law to teach African Americans to read or write. Sadly, at this time 90% of African Americans were illiterate. Fortunately, with the end of the Civil War four million African Americans were granted the most basic rights of citizenship such as to marry, raise their own children, own property and equal…show more content… At the age of sixteen, both of her parents and a younger sibling caught yellow fever and died. Ida had to be both mother and father to her three younger siblings. She kept the family together by securing a job teaching and moving to Memphis. While there, Ida was invited to join a literary club, where she became the editor of the Evening Star. After, writing an editorial which addressed the inequality of school for African Americans she was fired and began to write full time. Devastatingly, the North began to lose interest in the struggles of the African American people and slowly the courts overturned the civil liberty laws that had been won and Reconstruction was over. By the early 1900's American film companies began to portray negative images that African Americans were a people who were genetically inferior and would revert back to savagery. These movies increased racial hatred, rioting and lynching. Wells wrote a series of editorials following the lynching of three friends who were African American business men. In the aftermath of the lynching and her outspoken criticism, her newspaper's office was ravaged. Wells then moved to New York City, where she continued to write
