Ida Bell Wells becomes a teacher in a black elementary school in Holly Springs.

 

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the five remaining Wells children should be separated and sent to various foster homes. 

Wells resisted this solution. To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a black elementary school in Holly Springs. 

Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells, along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during the week while Wells was teaching.

But when Peggy Wells died from a stroke and her sister Eugenia died, Wells accepted the invitation of her Aunt Fanny and moved with her two youngest sisters to Memphis in 1883.