Ida B. Wells, the Black female journalist who investigated lynching in the South during the Jim Crow era, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize citation 89 years after she died in Chicago. The announcement was made Monday, May 4 at the Pulitzer Prize ceremony at Columbia University in New York.

During Wells’ time, Black journalists could not win Pulitzer Prizes. The honor was awarded to white journalists working at White newspapers. Most Black journalists worked for Black newspapers that were part of the Black Press.

Ironically, the first Black to win a Pulitzer Prize was Chicago’s Gwendolyn Brooks, who earned it in 1950 for her poem “Annie Allen.” The poem is about a Black girl growing up in Bronzeville.

Note: The Ida B. Wells Homes was a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project that was located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago constructed for African Americans from 1939 to 1941.


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