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1862 Ida Bell Wells is born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, to a slave carpenter, Jim Wells and cook mother, Elizabeth Warrenton.

1865The Civil War is over, with slavery institution in the South having been abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation. Ida's parents are freed.

1876 After the death of her parents and one of her siblings, Ida decides to take responsibility for her family's welfare by becoming a teacher. Eventually, she moves to Memphis with younger sisters Annie and Lily.

1884 Ida adopts the pen name Iola and begins writing articles for the Living Way. One day while sitting in the Lady's Car of a train, she is forced by the white conductor to get off. She files a lawsuit against the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad and wins in the local courts in December.

1887 She is chosen as secretary of the National Colored Press Association.

1889 Ida enters a three part ownership of the black newspaper Free Speech, with Baptist minister Taylor Nightingale and journalist J.L. Fleming. She pursues her journalist career with passionate articles; one in particular, on Memphis schools, causes her to lose her teaching job.

1892 Ida's article on black-white relationships rocks the city of Memphis and arouses indignation in the hearts of the people. The Free Speech office is destroyed by a mob, and she is forced to relocate to New York after her life is threatened. She's offered a partnership and weekly column in the New York Age and thus is still able to wage her campaign from the North.

1893 Ida gets a golden opportunity: combating lynching on an international level. Going abroad and touring Europe, she gives numerous poignant lectures on the lynch law in America. Upon returning, she joins with Frederick Douglass, Ferdinand Lee Barnett, and others to publish the pamphlet The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition for the Colored Jubilee Day .

1894 Ida, having found her lifelong companion in Ferdinand Lee Barnett, a lawyer and founder of the Chicago Conservator, marries him on June 27. She also publishes A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged causes of Lynching in the the United States, a compilation of lynching facts and accounts on some particularly horrific lynchings.

1896 Ida rejoices in motherhood with her first son, Charles. Meanwhile, she helps establish National Association of Colored Women (NACW).

1897 Ida has her second son, Herman. Now feeling the burden of maintaining a family, she relinquishes presidency of the Ida B Wells Club.

1898 When she learns of the brutal murder of a black postmaster Ida agrees to be the delegate chosen to protest to President McKinley himself. With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, she works with others to form a black fighting unit.

1901 Ida gives birth to her first daughter, who is named after herself--Ida Bell

1904 Ida has her second daughter, Alfreda.

1909 Ida takes part in the founding of one of America's most influential oganizations, the NAACP.

1910 Ida takes up a new kind of project. Seeing the plight of the black members of her community who were down on their luck or out on the streets she establishes for them a haven, the Negro Fellowship League Reading Room and Social Center.

1913 Besides fighting segregation and racism, Ida also targets gender discrimination and establishes the Alpha Suffrage Club. later she participates in a powerful women's rights demonstration in Washington D.C.

1920 To her bitter disappointment, Ida is no longer able to fund the Negro Fellowship League and, after ten years of service, it is closed.

1928 Reflecting upon her life, Ida realizes she has a message to leave to give to future generations, both about her time in which she lived and her war against the lynch law. She brings everything togeher in a moving biography, appropriately titled Crusade for Justice.

1930 Though she is over seventy years old, Ida embarks upon a new task; running for state legislature. With relentless vigor she campaigns, distributing posters and giving speeches. Though she loses the race, Ida sets and important example for women daring to break down gender barriers.

1931 Her extraordinary life comes to an end. Ida dies of uremia on March 25.