Browse Items (8 total)

Ida fights segregation on the railroad

Memphis was rebuilding when Ida B. Wells arrived in the 1880s. After the yellow fever epidemic, the city levied a tax to build drainage systems &…

There's a lot of stuff on the world wide web

Way down the rabbit hole tonight. Memphis cartes de visites circa 1880s, many from a Gebhardt Studios on Beale Street that had both black & white…

Ida B. Wells, Owner & Editor

Ida B Wells didn’t love being a teacher, but as she built an adult life in Memphis, she began working as a reporter. Realizing that owning &…

The lynchings of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Stewart

By 1892, Ida B Wells’ Memphis paper was thriving. She traveled the Mississippi Delta selling subscriptions, tripling circulation. Free Speech was…

Memphis Streetcar boycott

Within weeks of the murders, so much of Black Memphis had left town that the streetcar ridership collapsed. Men from the City Railway Co came to Ida B…

The other Meriwether sister

Remember Elizabeth Meriwether, the suffragist who helped start the Memphis chapter of the Ku Klux Klan? She shared her home with her brother- &…

It ain't over till it's over

When exactly is the 19th Amendment anniversary? Was it ratified on August 18 or August 26? What’s the difference? Which should we observe?  Read on…

Suffragents

Have you heard the story of the young legislator who was the hero of Tennessee’s ratification of the 19th Amendment? I’m not talking about Harry…