Morehouse College announced its partnership with the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which focuses on increasing and retaining journalists and editors of color in the field of investigative reporting.
Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Mississippi. After moving to Memphis, she founded two newspapers and became a leading civil rights leader of her time. Seventy years before Rosa Parks, Wells refused to give up her seat in a first-class railway coach. She was physically removed but later won a $500 settlement from the railroad. Later, Wells was a leader of the anti-lynching and women’s suffrage movements.
Serving as advisers and mentors, the Society will have an on-campus presence at the college to prepare Morehouse students for ethical careers in journalism through skills building in investigative and social justice reporting. The Society, formerly at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be based on Morehouse’s campus.
“I am very excited that Morehouse College will be the new home of the Ida B. Wells Society,” said Nikole Hannah-Jones, who holds the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University and is a co-founder of the society. “This partnership helps our young organization settle more deeply into our mission, which is to increase the number of investigative reporters of color. Being located on the campus of a historically Black college located in Atlanta in proximity to other HBCUs and coming to Morehouse just as it gets its journalism major off the ground provides a tremendous opportunity for us to increase our impact on the field and society.”
