Ida B. Wells and Tim Kalich will be included in Mississippi Press Hall of Fame

By Jerry Mitchell | Originally published by Mississippi Today

The Mississippi Press Association will induct investigative journalist and civil rights advocate Ida B. Wells and former longtime publisher Tim Kalich into the Mississippi Press Hall of Fame in June.

In 1892, after three of Wells’ friends were killed by a white mob in Memphis, the Holly Springs native began to document the lynchings of Black Americans.

After a mob destroyed her presses and threatened to kill if she ever published again, she moved to Chicago and continued reporting.

“Nowhere in the civilized world save the United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 and 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless,” Wells wrote. “We refuse to believe this country, so powerful to defend its citizens abroad, is unable to protect its citizens at home.”

She helped found the NAACP and became a leader in the early Civil Rights Movement, working alongside W. E. B. Du Bois, Madam C. J. Walker, Mary Church Terrell and Frederick Douglass. She also pushed for women’s suffrage, working with Susan B. Anthony and others.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which opened in 2018, features a reflection space in her honor.

Wells and Kalich will be inducted into the Hall of Fame during the 160th Annual Meeting of the MPA on June 26 in Biloxi.

Kalich retired in 2025 as editor and publisher of The Greenwood Commonwealth after a journalism career spanning more than 40 years. He is a seven-time recipient of the Emmerich Award for Editorial Excellence, one of the highest honors presented annually by MPA, and has earned dozens of awards for reporting, photography and column writing.

He is a past president of MPA and former chairman of the Mississippi Press Foundation. In 2024, the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media presented him with the Silver Em Award for outstanding contributions to journalism. Since  2025, he has coordinated statewide editorial collaborative projects for Press Forward Mississippi, a philanthropic initiative focused on strengthening local journalism.

“We are very excited by the committee’s choices for induction into the Hall of Fame this year,” said MPA  President George Russell Turner, publisher and editor of The Greene County Herald and The Richton Dispatch. “We feel these are worthy recognitions of journalism’s significance in our state and very appropriate for our 160th year.”

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article