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. WELLSWhite men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women.
More Ida B. Wells Quotes
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The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased.
IDA B. WELLS -
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 -
I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap.
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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.
IDA B. WELLS -
The Afro-American is not a bestial race.
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 -
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 -
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 emergency no longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West.
IDA B. WELLS -
There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.
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 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.
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Virtue knows no color line.
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 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.
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The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.
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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Those who commit the murders write the reports.
IDA B. WELLS -
The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
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.
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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.
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The appetite grows for what it feeds on.
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.
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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 shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are of minor importance.
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