NONFICTION - Jan. 8, 1995

THE MEMPHIS DIARY OF IDA B. WELLS edited by Miriam Decosta-Willis (Beacon: $24; 214 pp.) Personal accounts of what life was like for middle-class black women in the 19th Century are almost nonexistent, which makes the diary of Ida B. Wells a rare find. However, just because a diary is rare doesn’t necessarily mean it is satisfying.

Wells, who was born into slavery, lost her parents at 16 and worked as a teacher to help support her younger siblings. Eventually, she became an accomplished journalist and social activist, particularly known for her determined crusade against lynching. “The Memphis Diary” chronicles an important period in Wells’ mid-20s as she struggled for her own identity both personally and professionally in an environment dominated by racism, patriarchy, and repression.

Sadly though, it seems the forces Wells was fighting may have been the same ones that keep the diary almost completely devoid of any intimacy, so that when a strong, true emotion sneaks past Wells’ own censor it feels like looking at one of those candid photographs that accidentally capture terrible, hidden pain on a person who normally appears seamless.

Here is Wells in a rare open moment: “I feel so dissatisfied with my life, so isolated from all my kind. I cannot or do not make friends & these fits of loneliness will come & I tire of everything. My life seems awry, the machinery out of gear & I feel there is something wrong.”

Ida B. Wells was strong, difficult, passionate, moral and very, very smart. It is unfortunate that we hardly ever see her unveiled.