Wells was born in 1862 in Mississippi. She was sixteen when her parents were killed in a yellow fever epidemic, leaving her and her siblings to fend for themselves. To take care of the brothers and sisters she loved, she found work as a teacher and then as a journalist. In 1889, she purchased part of an African-American newspaper called Free Speech. She was driven out of Memphis, Tennessee, in 1892, after writing an editorial about white men who were quick to accuse black men of rape. She moved to Chicago and in 1895 she married Frederick Barnett who was also a journalist and activist. She was considered a “woman of race”. This means that she was more concerned with improving the African American race than integrating with whites. Wells worried about her people, especially when she noticed that many men were being killed for crimes they did not commit. She spoke very openly about it and put her life on the line to try to stop these