Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an early pioneer in the civil rights movement in the United States.
Best Ida B Wells Quotes
Those who commit the murders write the reports. ~ Ida B. Wells.
The appetite grows for what it feeds on. ~ Ida B. Wells.
I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. ~ Ida B. Wells.
The Afro-American is not a bestial race. ~ Ida B. Wells.
Virtue knows no color. ~ Ida B. Wells.
I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit. ~ Ida B. Wells.
Treat the world well. It was not given to you by your parents but lent to you by your children. ~ Ida B. Wells.
The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. ~ Ida B. Wells.
Lynching is color line murder. ~ 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 way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them. ~ Ida B. Wells.
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. ~ Ida B. Wells.
The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law. ~ Ida B. Wells.
Famous Ida B Wells Quotes
A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home. ~ Ida B. Wells.
Virtue knows no color line, and the chivalry which depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect. ~ 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.
It is extremely rough to follow through with my goals, but I felt a responsibility to show the world what the African Americans are facing through this rough patch. ~ 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 white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder. ~ Ida B. Wells.
The government which had made the Negro a citizen found itself unable to protect him. It gave him the right to vote, but denied him the protection which should have maintained that right. ~ Ida B. Wells.
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. ~ 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. ~ Ida B. Wells.
Top Ida B Wells Quotes
During the slave regime, the Southern white man owned the Negro body and soul. It was to his interest to dwarf the soul and preserve the body. ~ 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.
Burning and torture here lasts but a little while, but if I die with a lie on my soul, I shall be tortured forever. I am innocent. ~ Ida B. Wells.
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. ~ Ida B. Wells.
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.
Then these lynchers went quietly away and the bodies of the woman and three men were taken out and buried with as little ceremony as men would bury hogs. ~ 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.
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.
Popular Ida B. Wells Quotes
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 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.
I’d rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the government that it had done a dastardly thing than to save my skin by taking back what I said. ~ 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. ~ 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.
The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense. ~ Ida B. Wells.
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. ~ Ida B. Wells.
There must always be a remedy for wrong and injustice if we only know how to find it. ~ Ida B. Wells.
If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. ~ Ida B. Wells.
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.
Inspirational Ida B Wells Quotes
The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press. ~ 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 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. ~ 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 imperiled. ~ Ida B. Wells.
The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American. ~ Ida B. Wells.
The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. ~ Ida B. Wells.
In nearly all communities wife-beating is punishable with a fine, and in no community is it made a felony. ~ Ida B Wells.
There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms. ~ Ida B. Wells.
There can be no possible belief that these people were inspired by any consuming zeal to vindicate God’s law against miscegenationists of the most practical sort. The woman was a willing partner in the victim’s guilt, and being of the superior race must naturally have been more guilty. ~ 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.
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. ~ Ida B. Wells.
The white man’s dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities. ~ Ida B. Wells.
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. ~ Ida B. Wells.
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. ~ Ida B. Wells.
So these were the 55 top Ida B Wells quotes about lynching, success, journalism, voting, feminis and racism.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Rupi Kaur quotes and Moneybagg Yo quotes.
