Page "Ida B. Wells" Paragraph 4

Following the funerals, friends and relatives decided that the six remaining Wells children should be sent to various foster homes.

Wells resisted this solution.

To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she dropped out of Rust College and found work as a teacher in a black elementary school.

( The schools were racially segregated.

) Her grandmother Peggy Wells, along with other friends and relatives, stayed with the children during the week while she was away teaching.

Without this help, she would have not been able to keep her siblings together.

She resented that white teachers were paid $ 80 a month in public schools when she was paid only $ 30 a month.

This discrimination made her more interested in the politics of race and improving the education of blacks.