Ida Wells BarnettEssay title: Ida Wells BarnettIda Wells BarnettIda Wells-Barnett was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862. She was the oldest of eight children. Ida was born of slaves, but her parents were able to support eight children. Her mother was a famous cook, and her father was a skilled carpenter. When Ida was only fourteen, an epidemic of Yellow Fever swept though Holly Spring and killed her parents and youngest sibling. She kept her family together by securing a job teaching. Ida managed to continue her education by attending near by Rust College. Then she moved to Memphis to live with her aunt and help raise her youngest sisters.
It was in Memphis where Ida first began to fight. In 1884, she was asked by the conductor of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man, and ordered her to move into the smoking car, which was already crowed with other passengers. She refused to move. Then they tried to drag her out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of her arms. She bit him. Then he tried it again, but he failed. Since he could not drag her out by himself. So he went up front and got a baggage man and another man to help him. Of course they succeeded. Wells was removed from the train and other passengers-all whites-applauded. When Ida returned to Memphis, she hired an attorney to sue the railroad. She won her case, but the Railroad Company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee and it reversed the lawsuit. After that, Ida worked tirelessly,
A Story of the Underground Railroad The Memphis Underground Railroad, the first of the five, was a small steam-powered transportation system consisting of the Mississippi Street Station (MRS) of Tennessee, the South Fork Underground Station (STS), Tennessee Street Station (STS) of Tennessee, and the Eastern Branch Underground Substation (EFSS) of Tennessee. The stations were built by Charles Denton, who traveled to Memphis one year, or one month. StS were the first of the four underground railroad lines, and most were run between the Mississippi and Tennessee lines. The stations had no air-conditioners and the train would be suspended at a station in the middle of a busy city. StS and FFSS were, however, run from the Mississippi side of the Mississippi Street Station. After the StS lines were built, Denton moved his car up and down the tracks to try to get the trains to move. After a few months, the StS stations were moved from the Eastern Branch underground station to the Mississippi StS station, where they were eventually run from the StS underground. StS stations started in 1887 and grew through the years. Denton kept the stations running on a private plane, which carried him to Nashville, Tennessee. Eventually, the StS stations ran across the Tennessee River and into Florida. In 1892, they were renamed the StS and FFSS stations, but they served to keep their trains from moving northward while still keeping them running. Once the station remained in service in 1894, however, they were closed all together and moved into their respective stations. In 1897, StS and FFSS were renamed and closed. The StS and FFSS stations were finally taken over by the Tennessee Railroad Company in 1912 and they opened the Tennessee & Ohio Railroad (TNR) in 1914. The Tennessee Railroad started out in 1885, but ended up building a new one in 1889. During the late 1920s, the Tennessee Railroad Commission began collecting and transferring records to the Tennessee Museum and Library, which was housed in Nashville (now the Tennessee Institute for the Study of Civil War History in Nashville). The first Tennessee Underground Railroad, the Tennessee Underground, started as the Tennessee StS, and the Tennessee Subway started in 1916 as the Tennessee and Ohio Underground Railroad. It also brought transportation to other states and continents with more than two million persons. In 1923, the Union Army began shipping trains out of North Carolina and Georgia. In 1924, the United States Constitution granted Congress the power of regulating the transportation of people without undue interference from the federal government or other government entities. The first Tennessee Underground Railroad in the United States in 1924 was the Tennessee StS. In 1926, then-Governor Denton was elected president, the first person elected to the Confederate National Association since the Civil War. In 1929, the Tennessee Railroad and Metro Railroad Company were formed as the Union Railroad, and the Tennessee Underground Railroad was named as one of the four underground railroad lines. In 1932, Denton took over as general manager and built the state highway system, which included rail service and the underground railroad. The Southern Railroad system was to join the Tennessee Underground, and the Mississippi Underground, too, between 1936 and 1939. For more information, see the Tennessee Railroad Railroad website.