Ferdinand Lee Barnett

Ferdinand Lee Barnett (February 18, 1852 – March 11, 1936) was an American journalist, lawyer, and civil rights activist in Chicago, beginning in the late Reconstruction era. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, as a child he fled with his family to Windsor, Ontario, Canada, just before the American Civil War. After the war, they settled in Chicago, where Barnett graduated from high school, and then obtained his law degree from what is today Northwestern University School of Law. He was a founding editor of the African-American oriented The Chicago Conservator monthly in 1878. The third black person to be admitted to the practice of law in Illinois, he also became a successful lawyer. In 1895, Barnett married Ida B. Wells, a journalist and anti-lynching activist. In 1896, Barnett became Illinois' first black assistant state's attorney. He was active in anti-lynching and civil rights causes and was called "one of the foremost citizens Chicago has ever had" by the Chicago Defender. Early life Ferdinand Lee Barnett was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1852. His mother was a freewoman, Martha Brooks, born about 1825. His father, also named Ferdinand Lee Barnett, was born in Nashville about 1810 and worked as a blacksmith. He purchased his family's freedom the year Ferdinand was born. They lived in Nashville until about 1859, when they left the United States and moved to Windsor, Ontario, across the Detroit River from Detroit, Michigan. They wanted to avoid the reach of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which had created incentives for slave catchers to kidnap free blacks and sell them into slavery.