Civil Rights icon Ida B. Wells honored with a barbie doll

Barbie is honoring pioneering journalist and civil rights icon Ida B Wells with the latest release from their Inspiring Women collection.

Ida B Wells Barbie Doll

The Ida B. Wells doll shows her in the middle of a newsroom draped in a blue dress holding a Memphis Free Speech newspaper.

Photo Credit: Mattel

Barbie’s Inspiring Women collection focuses on “honoring historical role models who paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before.”

Where To Buy

Previous doll releases include Rosa Parks,Katherine Johnson, Ella Fitzgerald and Maya Angelou.

You can buy Wells barbie doll on Amazon.

Wells was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence.

As an astute writer, Wells also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South.

Wells was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi during slavery.

She was orphaned at 16 after her parents – as well as a younger brother – died from a yellow fever epidemic. She found work as a teacher to support her five remaining siblings and moved to Memphis. There she became a leading journalist and civil rights activist.

By the time Wells turned 25, she was the co-owner and editor of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, a local black newspaper, a platform she used to skewer racial inequality.

She was also one of the founders of the NAACP.

Wells was an unsung hero, who galvanized to count, investigate and report lynchings in America as no one had done before, hurling her 5ft frame into vicious territory with all the fearlessness of a fierce reporter.

Wells was often overshadowed by more familiar giants of the civil rights movement. But now she is being rediscovered for her crusader activism and investigative journalism.

Ida B. Wells died of uremia (kidney failure) in Chicago on March 25, 1931, at the age of 68.