📍Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum, 220 North Randolph Street, Holly Springs, MS 38635, USA
1862 – 1878“I was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in July 1862, during the Civil War, probably on the property of the architect Spires Boling, whose fine house on North Randolph Street is now the museum that bears my name. My father, James Wells, was hired out to Boling as a carpenter's apprentice, and my mother, Elizabeth, was a famous cook. Within months of my birth, emancipation came, and my parents began new lives as free people in the town. My father became a respected carpenter and a trustee of Shaw College, later Rust College, a school founded for freed people, and he took a keen interest in politics, reading the newspaper and attending meetings. My mother, deeply religious, learned to read alongside her children and made sure we went to school and to church. I was the eldest of eight, and I loved reading; I read the Bible and every book in the school library. Our home was full of hope for what freedom could mean. In 1878, when I was sixteen, yellow fever swept through Holly Springs, and my parents and my baby brother were taken from us. Friends wanted to divide my brothers and sisters among different homes, but I refused. I lengthened my skirts to look older, took a teaching job in the country, and kept the family together. Those years made me fearless. In Memphis I became a journalist, and after friends were lynched, I investigated and exposed the truth about lynching across America. Holly Springs remembers me with the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum, in the house where my story began.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today