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. WELLSThe mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.
More Ida B. Wells Quotes
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I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.
IDA B. WELLS -
The Afro-American is not a bestial race.
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 -
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 -
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 -
One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
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 -
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 miscegenation laws of the South only operate against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white women.
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 -
The emergency no longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West.
IDA B. WELLS -
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
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 -
White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women.
IDA B. WELLS -
The appetite grows for what it feeds on.
IDA B. WELLS -
There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.
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 -
The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way towards proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless,
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 -
Virtue knows no color line.
IDA B. WELLS