Barbie released the Ida B. Wells doll in honor of the late activist and journalist as part of their “Inspiring Women” line. The line was started to celebrate women who have paved the way for young girls.
Their website states: “The Barbie Inspiring Women Series pays tribute to incredible heroines of their time; courageous women who took risks, changed rules and paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before.”
Ida B. Wells was a journalist and activist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Wells used her writing skills to shed light on the conditions of enslaved people in the South.
Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862, Wells was brought up as an enslaved person. When the Civil War ended in 1885, Wells’ parents became politically active in Reconstruction Era politics. Wells was taught the importance of education at an early age and enrolled at Rust College but was expelled when she started a dispute with the university president.
Wells lost her parents and infant brother to yellow fever in 1878. She became an educator and finished raising her other siblings in Memphis, Tennessee.
After one of her friends was lynched, Wells turned her attention to these acts of violence. She published a pamphlet and wrote several columns in the newspaper exposing these lynchings. People were enraged and drove Wells out of Tennesse, forcing her to relocate to Chicago, Illinois.
“Despite being born into slavery in 1862, Ida B. Wells became a pioneering journalist and outspoken activist for civil rights and women’s suffrage,” Mattel said on their website. “She co-owned and edited a Memphis newspaper where she courageously wrote about inequality affecting African-Americans.”
Wells continued her career as an activist, shedding light on the issue of systemic racism to foreign audiences. She went on and co-founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
