Ida B. Wells Quotes

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"If this work can contribute in any way toward 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, I shall feel I have done my race a service."

"The Afro-American is not a bestial race."

"The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The white man's dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities."

"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."

"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."

"The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense."

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

"Thus lynch law held sway in the far West until civilization spread into the Territories and the orderly processes of law took its place. The emergency no longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West."

"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."

"The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South."

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

"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."

"The white man's victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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