Ida B. Wells, Black journalist and suffragist, honored with new Barbie doll

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

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Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

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January 25, 2022

By Adela Suliman, Washington Post

Black American journalist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells will have her likeness transformed into a Barbie doll to honor her historic achievements.

© Jason Tidwell/MattelIda B. Wells, Black journalist and suffragist, honored with new Barbie doll

Wells, who was born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862 during the Civil War, went on to break boundaries as a prominent suffragist fighting to expand the right to vote.

Wells also won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for her “courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching” and helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

“Barbie is proud to honor the incredible Ida B. Wells as the newest role model in our Inspiring Women series, dedicated to spotlighting heroes who paved the way for generations of girls to dream big and make a difference,” an Instagram account for Barbie, a doll manufactured by Mattel, said in a post.

Wells’s activism and work had brought “light to the stories of injustice that Black people faced in her lifetime,” Barbie said, adding that learning about “heroes” like Wells could help today’s children envision a better future.

Read the full article here.

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