Editor’s Note: The following story was written by a student in the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in partnership with Teen Living, a youth services organization.

There are countless acts of senior abuse that occur daily in places such as nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. This much we know. The big questions that remain are: What steps are necessary to ensure that these numbers are reduced? What are people in authority doing to stop elder abuse? What can someone such as a mere witness do to prevent this?

To answer some of these questions, I turned to someone with some prior knowledge and experience in the senior rights movement, Lori Clark of the Jane Adams Senior Caucus.

I asked Clark these questions and more followed as the conversation continued and my interest was persistently piqued.

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Descendants of Civil Rights Activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett pose with Sandra Young, a former president of the Ida B. Wells Homes public housing development. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

Remembering Ida B. Wells

Several Chicago public housing tenants representatives, city public officials and a few prominent people around town got together to remember what would have been the 150th birthday of civil rights activist Ida B. Wells on July 16 at the community room of 3750 S. Cottage Grove on the site of the mixed-income Oakwood Shores housing complex, two blocks from where organizers plan a monument in her honor. Oakwood Shores replaced the Ida B. Wells public housing development, the last section of which was demolished in August 2011.

The participants, including some of Wells’ relatives, mingled and ate hors d’oeuvres as they listened to Shirley Newsome from the Ida B. Wells Commemorative Art Committee give a brief update on the effort to build the memorial.

A world-renowned African American sculptor, Chicagoan Richard Hunt, was chosen to create a sculpture of Wells and he was on hand to speak about his process as well.

Afterward, some of the participants took a short walk to 37th Street and Langley Avenue, the future site of the monument. Wells lived in the Bronzeville neighborhood “where she lived, worked and raised her family from 1895 until 1931,” according to the Wells Art Committee, a subcommittee of the Oakwood Shores Working Group, which is a committee designated by the Chicago Housing Authority to oversee and provide input on planning, developing and maintaining the mixed-income community.

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