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. WELLSIn 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.
More Ida B. Wells Quotes
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The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.
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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
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The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.
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There must always be a remedy for wrong and injustice if we only know how to find it.
IDA B. WELLS -
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.
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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.
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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.
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Lynching is color line murder.
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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.
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The Afro-American is not a bestial race.
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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.
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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.
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The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.
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Thus lynch law held sway in the far West until civilization spread into the Territories and the orderly processes of law took its place.
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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