The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.
IDA B. WELLSThe 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.
More Ida B. Wells Quotes
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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 -
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 South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.
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 -
The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
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 -
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
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 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 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 felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap.
IDA B. WELLS -
A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.
IDA B. WELLS -
The emergency no longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West.
IDA B. WELLS -
One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
IDA B. WELLS