Inspiration personified.

Wells was born a slave in 1862 to a father who was a skilled carpenter and a mother who was a famous cook. While both were literate and taught their daughter to read, they died in the yellow fever epidemic when Wells was only 16, leaving her to care for her five younger siblings. Undaunted, she attended school at Shaw University, now Rust College, and began work as a teacher in Memphis. While riding the train to work, she was denied a seat in the ladies’ coach and sued. Although her legal victory was overturned, her writing about the case caused her to change her career to journalism.

As the tide of violence toward African Americans rose in the post-Reconstruction South, Wells was fearless in her writing about lynching, and she spoke out with such fervor that threats to her personal safety kept her exiled from the South for the next forty years. Her legacy not only in fighting violence, but in working for the suffragist movement and as a founding member of the NAACP has made Wells a figure of worldwide renown and acclaim. At the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum, located in the Spires Bolling house, visitors can see a variety of family heirlooms as well as historic African American artifacts.

After spending some time in this inspiring woman’s company, you’ll want to explore her alma mater. Rust College, founded as Shaw University on the former site of slave auctions, was only the second college founded in America for the education of African Americans. Besides Wells, other outstanding Rust alumni include Ruby Elzy, a Pontotoc native who originated the role of Serena in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and appeared in The Emperor Jones. Her story, like that of Sherwood Bonner, is one of genius cut short. She died the age of 35, just as she was about to reach her greatest dream, to star in the title role of Verdi’s Aida.

Today, Rust College is home to Rust College Center, which houses more than 400 pieces of African art, sculptures and masks in the Ronald Trojcak African Art Collection of tribal arts and fabrics.

There are also several other important and interesting venues in Holly Springs where you can witness the fight for human rights. A walk through Cottrell cemetery shows you the graves of important African American leaders, like Marshall County’s first African American sheriff.   The preserved papers Roy Wilkins, long-time executive director of the NAACP, hold a dynamic yet intimate portrait of the battle for Civil Rights, detailed in vivid remembrances and exchanges. Wilkins recognized the legitimate anger of the dispossessed, saying, “First in myth, later in reality, passion and violence watered my root soil.” Yet he worked tirelessly for a peaceful and nonviolent world where the rights of all would be respected.

An ability to encompass the broader world, a passionate striving for higher goals. This is what sets Holly Springs apart. Another great case in point is the Finley Sisters and the way their gift to the world has taken flight.