The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
IDA B. WELLSI felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap.
More Ida B. Wells Quotes
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The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.
IDA B. WELLS -
The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
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 -
The Afro-American is not a bestial race.
IDA B. WELLS -
The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.
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 -
I shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are of minor importance.
IDA B. WELLS -
The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.
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 came home every Friday afternoon, riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday and Sunday washing and ironing and cooking for the children and went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon.
IDA B. WELLS -
Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.
IDA B. WELLS -
I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way… so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people.
IDA B. WELLS -
The negro has suffered far more from the commission of this crime against the women of his race by white men than the white race has ever suffered through his crimes.
IDA B. WELLS -
In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed.
IDA B. WELLS -
Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense.
IDA B. WELLS -
I am only a mouthpiece through which to tell the story of lynching and I have told it so often that I know it by heart. I do not have to embellish; it makes its own way.
IDA B. WELLS -
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. WELLS -
One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
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 -
The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.
IDA B. WELLS -
What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.
IDA B. WELLS -
Those who commit the murders write the reports.
IDA B. WELLS -
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 -
The appetite grows for what it feeds on.
IDA B. WELLS -
Lynching is color line murder.
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