First Class Trouble

This episode tells the story of Ida B. Wells: how a 1884 railroad confrontation launched her into a lifelong fight against lynching, segregation, and political exclusion. From the Memphis Free Speech to pamphlets like Southern Horrors and A Red Record, Wells turned journalism and careful documentation into tools of resistance. The episode traces her tactics—investigation, public evidence, lectures, international pressure, and civic organizing in Chicago—showing how she exposed systemic racial violence, refused second-class inclusion, and built institutions that outlasted attempts to silence her.