Born into slavery, Ida B. Wells later became an educator, an investigative journalist and an early civil rights activist, shedding light on the plight of Black Americans across the South. After the brutal deaths of three friends who were victims of lynching, Wells began chronicling mob violence, publishing her findings in articles and pamphlets. The American public eventually became less tolerant of lynching, in part because of the awareness created by Wells and the N.A.A.C.P., which she helped to establish. But efforts to pass federal antilynching legislation did not succeed until 2022, in the wake of nationwide protests over police killings of Black Americans.
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