MARTIN: Many know your name from your seminal work, "Where and When I Enter." That was a pioneering work about black women and activism. Is that how you made the acquaintance of Ms. Ida B.

Roland Martin: I mean, to be perfectly honest, I don’t look at it that way. I’m just being honest. William Monroe Trotter was honest, Martin Delany was honest, Ida B. Wells was honest.

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice” (9 p.m., Tuesday, WTTW-Ch. 11), profiles a warrior who predated Martin Luther King and many of his methods by nearly a century. Wells, born into slavery two ...