Abstract: Journalist-and publisher, was born in Malvern, Pennsylvania, one of six children of Samuel Lewis, a laborer and ship painter, and Grace Walker, a businesswoman who operated an employment agency. Education was of utmost importance to the Lewis family. Ida, who spent summers visiting relatives in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Georgia, would often stay up all night reading when everyone else in her house was asleep. She attended an all-black grammar school, which she credited with giving her a solid grounding in black history. Upon graduation from Swarthmore High School (which was predominantly white), she decided to pursue her interest in writing and journalism at Boston University's College of Public Relations and Communication, from which she graduated in 1956 with a BA in Journalism I always wanted to write she later recalled We had a tree in our backyard where I was brought up I would climb that ...