The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival.
IDA B. WELLSThe only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.
More Ida B. Wells Quotes
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The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.
IDA B. WELLS -
There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.
IDA B. WELLS -
I honestly believe I am the only woman in the United States who ever traveled throughout the country with a nursing baby to make political speeches.
IDA B. WELLS -
Although lynchings have steadily increased in number and barbarity during the last twenty years, there has been no single effort put forth by the many moral and philanthropic forces of the country to put a stop to this wholesale slaughter.
IDA B. WELLS -
The doors of churches, hotels, concert halls and reading rooms are alike closed against the Negro as a man, but every place is open to him as a servant.
IDA B. WELLS -
One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
IDA B. WELLS -
The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.
IDA B. WELLS -
No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders
IDA B. WELLS -
Virtue knows no color line.
IDA B. WELLS -
There must always be a remedy for wrong and injustice if we only know how to find it.
IDA B. WELLS -
I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap.
IDA B. WELLS -
The emergency no longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West.
IDA B. WELLS -
Lynching is color line murder.
IDA B. WELLS -
Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob.
IDA B. WELLS -
Thus lynch law held sway in the far West until civilization spread into the Territories and the orderly processes of law took its place.
IDA B. WELLS