Ida B. Wells was a Memphis schoolteacher who moved into journalism, and found her mission when a friend who ran a cooperative grocery in a black neighborhood was lynched. Her editorial said in print what nobody in the South would say out loud about the lie used to justify it. The white papers answered by calling for the editor to be branded and castrated — assuming, wrongly, that the writer was a man.
Full episode: https://youtu.be/SwCe94cYX0Y