commitment ends in an exploitative relationship
(her partner, a hustler, has already fathered a child
with another woman), her younger sister seems
unable to make up her mind about the two men in
her life, Travis and Malek, her high school sweet-
heart and the father of her son. The experienced
and loving Big Momma keeps the two sisters from
personal destruction and helps them sort out their
lives. Weber was named the Blackboard Bookseller
of the Year in 2000.
BIBLIOGRPAHY
Mullen, Leah. “Carl Weber Gives ‘Best Selling’ Author
a New Meaning.” Available online. URL: http://au-
thors.aalbc.com/carlweber.htm. Accessed October
26, 2006.
Wilfred D. Samuels
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. (1861–1931)
Born a slave on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs,
Mississippi, Ida B. Wells-Barnett came of age dur-
ing the Reconstruction and Southern Redemption
and became one of the most important African-
American activist leaders at the end of the 19th and
the beginning of the 20th century. Her countless
articles, pamphlets, and editorials against lynch-
ing, discrimination, and other forms of racism,
along with her journals, lectures, and autobiog-
raphy, made her one of the most prolific journal-
ists, male or female, of her time. Her grassroots,
community-based work ethic represented a high
degree of accessibility and set precedents for the
work of such organizations as the Southern Chris-
tian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),
and the Black Panther Party, major players in the
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT and BLACK POWER move-
ment of the 1960s and 1970s.
Wells-Barnett was the first of eight children
born to Jim and Elizabeth Barnett. She attended
Shaw University (present-day Rust College) in
Holly Springs until her parents and youngest
brother died during the Mississippi yellow fever
epidemic of 1878. At age 16, she left Shaw to be-
come a county schoolteacher to provide for her
younger brothers and sisters. By 1884 she had
moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she taught
in the public schools and attended Fisk University
and the Lemoyne Institute.
In 1884 Wells-Barnett sued the Chesapeake,
Ohio & Southwestern Railroad Company after
being forcibly removed from the first-class coach
to the already crowded smoking car. As she relates
in her autobiography, Crusade for Justice, Wells-
Barnett literally fought the conductor all the way
to the smoker. Wells-Barnett’s suit came almost 12
years before the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in
Plessy v. Ferguson. The circuit court ruled in her
favor in December of that year; however, the Ten-
nessee Supreme Court overturned the decision
three years later. Though she lost the legal battle,
Wells-Barnett began her lifelong journalistic bar-
rage against racism, writing letters and articles
for African-American and Christian newspapers
such as the New York Freeman. Two years after
her suit, Wells-Barnett became the editor of the
Evening Star and wrote editorials under the pen
name Iola for the Living Way, a religious paper.
Wells-Barnett also kept a two-year diary from
1885 to 1887 detailing her economic and political
journey through her lawsuit and racial violence,
as well as the links between gender and racial
discrimination.
In 1891 Wells-Barnett began writing full time
after her “militant” editorials cost her the teaching
position in Memphis. She bought an interest in
Free Speech and Headlight, owned by Reverend R.
Nightingale, whose congregation helped make the
newspaper flourish. A year later she used its pages
and others across the nation to draw attention to
the mob lynching of three African-American gro-
cers in Memphis on March 9, 1892. Her burning
commentary urged the Memphis African-Ameri-
can community to leave the city in protest, and
her analysis of the lynch mob mentality placed
blame squarely on racist fears of an economically
independent Negro community. As a result of the
uncompromising language of Wells-Barnett’s edi-
torials, whites destroyed the newspaper office and
dared her to return to Memphis.538 Wells-Barnett, Ida B.