Ida B. Wells was an influential civil rights activist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was a journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, and an early leader in the civil rights movement. She is best known for her anti-lynching crusade, which she began after her own experience with a lynch mob in Memphis, Tennessee. She also worked to end segregation and disfranchisement of African Americans. Her activism and writings helped to shape the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.