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With Congress Parkway now renamed Ida B. Wells Drive, Chicago has its first major street named for a black woman

The bright green street signs bearing her name had already been installed, and digital mapping apps already acknowledged Ida B. Wells Drive as a major downtown Chicago thoroughfare.

But on Monday, elected officials, dignitaries, award-winning journalists, activists and dozens of residents gathered at the Harold Washington Library to officially celebrate the first major Chicago street to carry the name of an African-American woman.

“She was an original boss,” said Ald. Sophia King, 4th, who pushed the effort along with Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, to rename Congress Parkway, a prominent east-west artery. “She spoke truth to power and changed the landscape of Chicago and the world.”

“It’s bittersweet that it’s has taken so long,” King said. “But we are here.”

Also known by her married name, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an iconic investigative journalist who crusaded against the racist lynching of black men, pushed for women’s right to vote and started numerous organizations that aimed to improve the economic and social status of African-Americans. She was born into slavery in Mississippi, but went on to be a schoolteacher and created the first kindergarten for black children.

Wells-Barnett settled in Bronzeville in 1894 after her life was threatened, and she developed a reputation as a fearless activist and political strategist. But despite her many accomplishments, innovations and devotion to social justice, her contributions and legacy went largely unacknowledged.

For many years, her name rang out in Chicago because a large public housing complex also bore it. But as a result, the name became associated with poverty and violence.

So Monday’s ceremony — held months after the City Council approved the new street moniker — gave city leaders an opportunity to honor her in a more dignified and glorified way and shed light on her extraordinary life.

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton spoke of how Wells-Barnett attended the first women’s suffrage parade in 1913 in Washington, D.C., and refused to be sidelined because of her race. When she was asked to step aside, Wells-Barnett found her way to the Illinois group and marched out front with them.

“This woman … was not just an inspiration to me, as a black woman in politics, but one who endured so much so that we could all stand here today in service to our communities,” Stratton said. “Ida B. Wells spent her life as an activist, and seeking to ensure that women, and black women in particular, were not isolated from political movements, despite the racism and sexism we must often contend with, even to this day.”

The road named for Wells-Barnett stretches from Grant Park west to the entrance to the Eisenhower Expressway. The City Council approved the name change last summer.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, a candidate for Chicago mayor, said Wells-Barnett was an educator in everything she did.

“Society thought it had her destiny predetermined: a life surely to be cast aside and voiceless, her name forgotten,” Preckwinkle said. “Today Chicago will forever know the name of Ida B. Wells. … She held up a mirror to the face of America revealing its sins to the world all the while demanding change.”

New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones reflected on Wells-Barnett’s pioneering investigative skills, which created a blueprint still used today.

“She had such a strong sense of morality. She was going to tell the truth even if it came to her own detriment,” said Hannah-Jones, who called Wells-Barnett a fierce, feisty, dogged reporter who she considers her spiritual godmother. In her reporting, Wells-Barnett collected data and published statistics supporting her findings that black men were being lynched for reasons that were fabricated.

“Can you imagine a black woman at that time, going into territory where a black man or woman had literally been strung up and lynched and asking questions about why this was and what happened?” Hannah-Jones said. “She did this because she understood that the people that committed the murders wrote the reports.”

Hannah-Jones noted that, at the time of Wells-Barnett’s death in 1931, “she was the most famous black woman in the world.

“And yet it takes until 2019 to get a street named in her honor in the city where she is buried. I think that speaks to the way we have always erased the contributions of black women in this country,” Hannah-Jones said. “It is Ida’s time.”

For many years, Wells-Barnett was overlooked, but recently she has attracted renewed interest.

When she died, The New York Times failed to publish an obituary, but last year the publication addressed the oversight. And after more than a decade of fundraising, the descendants of Wells-Barnett have raised $300,000 toward a monument in her honor. In addition, a political fund aimed at promoting African-American women as candidates for public office now bears Wells-Barnett’s name.

Besides her work as a journalist and suffrage activist, Wells-Barnett ran a settlement house on the South Side that offered housing and social services to African-Americans migrating here from the South. She had a hand in creating the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Association for Colored Women.

She was also a mentor to W.E.B. DuBois and was close friends with abolitionist and freedom fighter Frederick Douglass. At a time when it was unusual to do so, she hyphenated her last name so that she could maintain her own while adopting her husband’s.

“She overcame long odds and high obstacles with hard work and eternal hope,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said. “Listening to the voiceless and the vulnerable — that is how she wrote history. Now Chicago will tell her story.”

“This is more than just a street sign,” the mayor added. “It is a sign of her service; it is a sign of her strength; it is also a sign of her selflessness. And all of us who will travel that road will now know something about not only our past, but more importantly how we bend the arc of history to a better day.”

For Michelle Duster, the great-granddaughter of Wells-Barnett, the moment was overwhelming. She kept having to remind herself to breathe and take it all in, she said. She hadn’t driven down Ida B. Wells Drive by Monday morning, but she had walked it.

“When I was walking over here and I saw the sign, I just had to take a moment and just stare,” she said. “We actually did this. … We actually managed to stick with the idea of having an African-American woman honored in such a prominent way, in such a large city. It’s just a really, really big achievement.”

lbowean@chicagotribune

Twitter @lollybowean