Lewis began her career in 1957 as a reporter for the
Amsterdam News and then for
The New York Age. From 1963 to 1969 she lived in Paris, where she wrote for
Le Monde,
Le Figaro Magazine,
Life and
Jeune Afrique. She conducted interviews for the
BBC. Her first essay collection,
The Deep Ditch and The Narrow Pit, was published in 1964. She moved back to the US in 1969, where she was a correspondent for
Jeune Afrique. In 1979, Lewis joined the faculty of
Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. During the 1980s she worked as a
political consultant and
press agent; her clients included
Ross Perot,
Abraham Hirschfeld and
Adam Clayton Powell IV. In 1998 Lewis became editor-in-chief of the NAACP's
The Crisis magazine. She was an
adjunct professor of journalism at
Boston University College of Communication and was a member of the Dean's Executive Advisory Board, the Alumni Council, and the College of Communication's National Alumni Committee. She established the Ida E. Lewis Scholarship Fund to support minority students in journalism. ==Awards and recognition==