Ferdinand Lee Barnett (February 18, 1852 – March 11, 1936) was an American journalist, lawyer, and civil rights activist in Chicago, Illinois, 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.