In Touch With Crusaders For Justice
By Betty Miller Buttram
FWIS Contributing Writer
“Let justice run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Book of Amos 5:24
A crusader is a person who campaigns vigorously for political, social, or religious change. It is a call for that person to actively pursue justice and righteousness in their lives and in society. It makes for a powerful message for social and morale reform. In honor of Women’s History Month, I honor two journalists, one in our past and one making her own legacy in the times we are living in now.
Ida B. Wells was born on the Bolling Farm near Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. She was the eldest of eight children of James Madison Wells and Elizabeth Warrenton. Both of her parents were enslaved to plantation owner Spires Bolling. Her father was a skilled carpenter, and her mother became known as a famous cook. After the Emancipation Proclamation, James became a trustee of the newly established Shaw University (now Rust College) in Holly Springs. Wells attended the newly formed Shaw University with her mother. In September 1878, Ida lost both parents and a brother during a yellow fever epidemic. Only 16 years old, family and friends urged her to break up the family and pursue her education. Instead, she managed to appear as 18 years old, gained employment as a teacher at a rural Black school outside of Holly Springs to keep her siblings together. Five years later, they joined an aunt in Memphis, Tennessee and Wells was hired as a teacher in Woodstock by the Shelby County School System. During summer vacations, she attended classes at Fisk University in Nashville, and LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis. She held strong political opinions and provoked many people with her views on women’s rights.
In 1884 on a train ride to Woodstock, Wells refused to move from the first-class section to the “Jim Crow” section. She was forcibly removed by three men to the applause of the all-white passengers. Wells sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. She won the verdict in circuit court but was reversed in appeals at the State Supreme Court Level. Wells wrote about the experience for a church publication, The Living Way, and received an immediate positive response. Her reputation spread, and her work appeared in prominent African American publications nationwide with insightful and scathing reviews of the conditions of Black life, discrimination, and inferior education. She became editor of Free Speech and Headlight, a small Memphis newspaper, where her bold editorials led to her dismissal by the Memphis School Board for criticizing the conditions in Black schools.
In 1892, three friends of Wells opened a grocery store across the street from a white-owned shop. Anger by the competition, a white mob attacked, and the Black men fought back and were jailed for wounding three attackers. A second mob formed the next day, forcibly removed the Black men from their jail cells, and killed them. Wells responded with an editorial urging all Black people to leave Memphis; 6,000 heeded her advice, and Wells’ anti-lynching crusade was born. She continued to write, research and publish about the charges causing the lynching of Black men. Outraged, a white mob attacked her newspaper office, destroyed the printing presses, and threatened her life.
Wells relocated to Chicago and began publishing articles in The New York Age and continued her anti-lynching campaign speaking throughout the Northeast. After conducting further research. Wells published The Red Record in 1895. This 100-page pamphlet was a sociological investigation of lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. In 1895 at the age of 33, Wells married Ferdinand L. Barnett, a Chicago activist, lawyer, and publisher of the first Black newspaper, Conservator and Wells became editor. The couple had four children. Wells was one of the founding organizers of the NAACP although her radical stance created conflict with the Association’s mainstream leadership. Wells died at the age of 69 on March 25, 1931, and 37 years later, another crusader was born.
Joy-Ann Reid was born on December 8, 1968, in Brooklyn, New York and has two siblings. Her father was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was an engineer. Her mother was a college professor and nutritionist from Guyana. Her parents met in graduate school at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Her parents eventually divorced, and her father returned to the Republic of the Congo. Reid grew up in Denver, Colorado. At the age of 17, Reid’s mother died of breast cancer, and she moved to Flatbush, Brooklyn to live with an aunt. She graduated from Harvard University in 1991. She paid her own bills and tuition while at Harvard. She recalls in a 2013 interview that her college experience was a quick immersion from a community that was 80% African American to a community that was 6% percent African American. She stated that she had to learn to live with roommates and people who were not her family and that it had been a good learning and growing experience. In 1997, she married Jason Reid, a documentary film editor, and the couple have three children.
Reid left New York and her job at a business consulting firm to begin her journalism career in 1997. She worked in South Florida for WSVN Channel 7 morning show. From 2006 to 2007, Reid was the co-host of Wake Up South Florida, a morning radio talk show. She served as managing editor of The Grio (2011-2014), a political columnist for Miami Herald (2003-2015), and the editor of The Reid Report political blog (2000-2014).
From February 2014 to February 2015, Reid hosted her own MSNBC afternoon cable news show, The Reid Report. The show was canceled on February 19, 2015, and Reid was shifted to a new role as an MSNBC National Correspondent. In May 2016, Reid hosted AM Joy, a political weekend-morning talk show on MSNBC. From July 2020 to February 24, 2025, Reid hosted The ReidOut. Reid’s show had powerful messages about political, social, and morale reform. The show was canceled, and Reid is no longer affiliated with MSNBC. Reid was the winner of the 2025 NAACP Image Award for Literary Work on the Biography of Medgar and Myrlie Evers prior to her firing from MSNBC.
Wells’ and Reid’s radical stance against injustice has created controversies with their journalist’s voices. Wells is remembered as part of our Black History, and Reid follows her creating a legacy of her own.