Best Ida B. Wells Quotes

Ida B. Wells Quotes About Feminism, Lynching, Suffrage, Memorable, Life & Change! In the 1890s, African American journalist Ida B. Wells in the United States led an anti-lynching crusade. She was born on July 16, 1862, as an enslaved person, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. They faced discrimination as African Americans in Mississippi due to racial prejudice and many restrictions. The early education that Wells received was at Shaw University. As a teenager, however, tragedy struck her family, forcing her to drop out of school.

Her resourcefulness allowed her to convince a nearby school administrator that she was 18 years old and had found employment as a teacher. As a writer, Wells focused on issues of race and politics in the South. Under the moniker “Iola,” she wrote articles for Black newspapers and periodicals. Later, she began to own the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and, finally, the Memphis Free Speech.

In addition to working as a publisher and journalist, Wells taught in a segregated Memphis public school. She expressed her dissatisfaction with Black-only schools in the city. For these attacks, she got fired in 1891. Then Wells brought her anti-lynching campaign in 1898 to the White House, leading a protest and demanding reforms from President McKinley. As a civil rights activist, Wells founded several organizations. She established the National Association of Colored Women in 1896. In being a founding member of the NAACP, Wells is also considered an activist.

Working for women, Wells called on Woodrow Wilson to end discriminatory hiring practices for government jobs as an aspect of her work with the National Equal Rights League. She ran for state senate in 1930 but lost. On March 25, 1931, Wells died from kidney disease in Chicago, Illinois, at 68.

Best Ida B. Wells Quotes

1. “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 

2. “Five human beings were lynched and that the matter was considered of so little importance that the powerful press bureaus of the country did not consider the matter of enough importance to ascertain the causes for which they were hanged.”– Ida B. Wells 

3. “I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.”– Ida B. Wells 

4. “I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked.”– Ida B. Wells 

5. “The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt.”– Ida B. Wells 

6. “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.”– Ida B. Wells 

7. “The shorter Negro stood gazing at the horrible death of his brother without flinching. Five minutes later he was also hanged.”– Ida B. Wells 

8. “Lee Walker, colored man, accused of raping white women, in jail here, will be taken out and burned by whites tonight. Can you send Miss Ida Wells to write it up?”– Ida B. Wells 

9. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and it does seem to me that notwithstanding all these social agencies and activities there is not that vigilance which should be exercised in the preservation of our rights.”– Ida B. Wells 

10. “Meredith Lewis was arrested in Roseland, La., in July of last year. A white jury found him not guilty of the crime of murder wherewith he stood charged.”– Ida B. Wells 

11. “To this add the fact of the inherent prejudice against colored people, and it will be clearly seen that a white jury is certain to find a Negro prisoner guilty if there is the least evidence to warrant such a finding. “– Ida B. Wells 

12. “The entire system of the judiciary of this country is in the hands of white people. “– Ida B. Wells 

13. “Yet colored women have always had far more reason to complain of white men in this respect than ever white women have had of Negroes.”– Ida B. Wells 

14. “Not only is it true that many of the alleged cases of rape against the Negro, are like the foregoing, but the same crime committed by white men against Negro women and girls, is never punished by mob or the law. “– Ida B. Wells 

15. “In nearly all communities wife-beating is punishable with a fine, and in no community is it made a felony.”– Ida B. Wells 

16. “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 

17. “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 

18. “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. “– Ida B. Wells 

19. “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 

20. “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 investigation—that it was preferable to hang the accused first and try him afterward.”– Ida B. Wells 

21. “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 

22. “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.”– Ida B. Wells 

23. “One had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”– Ida B. Wells 

24. “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”– Ida B. Wells 

25. “I honestly believe I am the only woman in the United States who ever traveled throughout the country .”– Ida B. Wells 

26. “The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.”– Ida B. Wells 

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

28. “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 

29. “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 

30. “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