Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, feminist Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoplein 1909...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth16 July 1862
CountryUnited States of America
character men cities
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,
girl men yield
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.
men white-man victory
The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
men lynching bravery
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.
reading men doors
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.
men white-man pockets
The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.
running home men
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.
alleged burning inability protect save states united women
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 Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South.
dollar god stop white
The white man's dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities.
arouse conscience contribute demand law people proving punishment race shall time toward work
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.
law civilization lynching
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.
gun self defense
The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.
lynching america united-states
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