Google Doodle features Chicago civil rights icon Ida B. Wells

SHARE Google Doodle features Chicago civil rights icon Ida B. Wells

Google uses the Doodle feature, the highlighted illustration on its search page, to mark news, special occasions and to just have a bit of fun from time to time.

On Thursday morning, the Doodle was used to appreciate some Chicago and civil rights history by featuring crusading journalist Ida B. Wells to mark her 153rd birthday.

July 16, 2015 marks Ida B. Wells’ 153rd birthday. | Google Doodle image

July 16, 2015 marks Ida B. Wells’ 153rd birthday. | Google Doodle image

Wells was a ferocious defender of civil liberties and in Chicago at the turn of the 19th Century was able to use a position at the Daily Inter Ocean and an ownership stake at the Chicago Conservator to broadcast her views and reporting to broader audiences.

The powerhouse of suffrage and rights was born a slave in Mississippi just before the Emancipation Proclamation. Before her death in 1931, Wells would report on the horror of Southern lynching culture and use her platforms and audience to press for the vote for women, civil liberties and other pursuits of equality.

Chicago named a public housing project in Bronzeville after her in 1941 in what would become a dubious honor, the the Ida B. Wells Homes were demolished in 2011.

The Google Doodle illustration is by Matt Cruickshank, a San Francisco-based artist.

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