Memphis Diary of I B W

Wells (1862-1931), an African American journalist who led an antilynching crusade in the 1890s, was born into slavery, orphaned at 16 and worked as a teacher to support her younger siblings. DeCosta-Willis (co-editor of Erotique Noire/Black Erotica) carefully reproduces here, with informed commentary, the diary Wells kept from 1885 to '87, when she lived in boardinghouses and taught school while struggling to get her articles published. The entries provide a unique look at the life of an independent, unmarried African American woman coping with financial hardships, romantic entanglements, sexism and racism. In 1885, Wells was awarded damages after she sued a railroad company because a conductor tried to force her to sit in the ``black only'' section; the decision was reversed in 1887, prompting her lament ``O God, is there no redress, no peace, no justice in this land for us?'' Also included are entries from her 1893 and 1930 diaries, as well as some of Wells's newspaper articles. A substantial contribution to African American studies. (Jan.)