“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.”

The South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.

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.

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.

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.

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.

There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.

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.

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.

The emergency no longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West.

The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.

The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.

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.

A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.

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.

Virtue knows no color line.

In fact, for all kinds of offenses – and, for no offenses – from murders to misdemeanors, men and women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

You’re going against the government of the United States. You don’t beat a federal court, a federal judge, and the FBI – there’s no way.

We all started playing football against our best friends, and I can’t remember a moment where, because it was my best friend, I did not want to win against him.

Watch! When the wind blows my banner against the bulwark, you shall take it.

I would rather die than do something which I know to be a sin, or to be against God’s will.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

It is also a course of action that strikes a blow against the regime of international order, but which offers the weak at least some protection from predatory states.