Quotes by Ida B. Wells

“The matter came up for judicial investigation, but as might have been expected, the white people concluded it was unnecessary to wait the result of the investigationthat it was preferable to hang t...”

“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 ...”

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

“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.”

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

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

“For nearly twenty years lynching crimes, which stand side by side with Armenian and Cuban outrages, have been committed and permitted by this Christian nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save t...”

“If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain. The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. The white man's dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities.”

“The assertion has been substantiated throughout these pages that the press contains unreliable and doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the most necessary things for the race to do is to get t...”

“A fifteen year old girl in Rayville, Louisiana, suspected of poisoning a white family is promptly hung on that suspicion; three reputable citizens of Memphis, Tenn., were taken from the jail and sh...”

“If indeed the pen is mightier than the sword, the time has come as never before that the wielders of the pen belonging to the race which is so tortured and outraged, should take serious thought and...”

“If it could be established, a fearlessly edited press is one of the crying necessities of the hour. Such a journal, edited in the midst of such conditions as exist in the South, can better give the...”

“How many such have gone down to a violent death without anything to chronicle the true facts in their case, will never be known. Besides, a respectful, yet firm demand for race rights is absolutely...”

“This is the greatest need of all among the masses of the South — the need of the press as an educator. Children of a larger growth, the masses of our people have never been taught the first rudimen...”

“The Afro-American needs to be taught the power of union, to realize his own strength; how to utilize that strength to secure to himself his inherent rights as did the plebeians of Rome. He makes th...”

“The race as such must be taught the value of emigration, both to relieve the congested condition which obtains, and to better their own condition by coming in contact with newer ideas, higher stand...”

“A religious staying off of the growing evil of the race — the excursion business — will do more to overthrow the odious Jim Crow laws of our statute books than all the railroad suits which are pros...”

“So imperative is the necessity for leading the race up to the clear heights of thought, then down into the valley of action, that if persecuted and driven from one place, we must set up the printin...”

“To read the white papers the Afro-American is a savage that is getting away from the restraint of the inherent fear of the white man which controlled his passions, and from whom women and children ...”