Ida B. Wells Quotes
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The South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.
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Lynching is color line murder.
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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. The emergency no longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West.
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The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
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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.
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The appetite grows for what it feeds on.
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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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Those who commit the murders write the reports.
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Virtue knows no color line.
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One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
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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. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. 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.
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The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
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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.
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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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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.
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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 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. 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.
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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.
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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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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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There must always be a remedy for wrong and injustice if we only know how to find it.
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I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. 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.
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The Afro-American is not a bestial race.
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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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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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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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A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.
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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 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.
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