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Citizens in Action

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Submitted By nikkiperezbro
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Research your selected citizen. Discover what they did and how they changed American society. Find out what motivated them to action and how it changed American culture or politics. Write in MLA format with works cited. Write your letter and be sure to include the following: why civic and political participation is important how the person influenced change what issues or events motivated the person to action why the person deserves a national holiday how society is different because of the person's work how you and others living today benefit from his or her efforts

Ida B. Wells deserves a National Holiday to honor her civic and political participation for women’s suffrage and civil rights. Even though she was a teacher in her early life, at a young age, Ida B. Wells witnessed the lynchings of young African-Americans and wanted to make change. From there, she eventually became a journalist and became part-owner of the Memphis Free Speech. Wells was an active journalist that exposed the harshness of the lynchings that occurred, and was an active women’s rights suffrage supporter. Commonly in these times, she would’ve been considered a “muckraker”. Politically, she was an active citizen who wanted to tell the public what was going on in the African American culture, and because of this, she showed how being participating in government can affect what happens in the legislative and judicial branch. When Wells’ articles about lynching and about white women pursuing Black men got popular, it led to death threats against her and her newspaper offices. Eventually, one night, her newspaper office got burned down. She left Memphis and moved to New York, where she became part owner of The New York Age and continued to write articles exposing the crimes of lynching. When Ida B. Wells moved to New York, she held a crusade against lynching, and lectured and wrote articles on the matter, and by being an influence to others, she organized antilynching societies. She had published “A Red Record”, which discusses the lynches of the previous three years in the South. She deserves a national holiday because she was able to make a mark in history dominantly, post-Civil War, when women and African-Americans were being overlooked. Because of her boldness and courage, she was the first African-American probation officer in Chicago. Wells was a hard-working and determined woman. She was a founding member of the National Afro-American Council (which is now the NAACP) and she founded the National Association of Colored Women, which devoted to the rights of women and children. Wells also helped in starting the Negro Fellowship League, and created the Alpha Suffrage Club to promote the right for women to vote. Wells was a strong woman who not only displayed the happenings of racism post-civil war through her life experiences, but she also led Americans closer to the race and gender equality we currently hold today. Of all people, who are deserving of a national holiday, Ida B. Wells is the most entitled by far.

Works Cited

Bozeman, Andrew. San Francisco Bay View, n.p., n.d., http://sfbayview.com/2013/03/do-you-know-how-ida-b-wells-has-affected-our-lives/ . March 2, 2013

(Textbook). United States History and Geography: Modern Times - Florida Edition - 2013. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Print.

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