Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an investigative journalist whose factual reporting and scholarly analysis of lynchings provided the genesis for what later became a prominent movement in the United States. As editor of the weekly Memphis Free Speech, Wells aroused such anger among Tennessee residents that her newspaper office and presses were destroyed by hoodlums. During her lifetime her work appeared in more than twenty-five different publications, and in 1895 she took her consciousness-raising style of journalism to Chicago's first black weekly, the Conservator, when she became its editor. At the Conservator Wells-Barnett again lashed out at societal injustices. She was determined to do all she could to create better living conditions for black Americans.

Had Wells-Barnett written for leading muckraking magazines between 1902 and 1912 she would most assuredly have ranked among the best of the muckrakers. That her name is not included along with the militants and sensationalists of the...