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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.

Ida B. Wells

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Ida B. Wells
Age: 68 †
Born: 1862
Born: July 16
Died: 1931
Died: March 25
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Sociologist
Suffragette
Suffragist
Writer
Holly Springs
Mississippi
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Ida Wells-Barnett
Ida Bell Wells
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
Century
Portions
Body
Crowd
Distributes
Crowds
Souvenirs
Flesh
Lynching
Fingers
Strips
Ears
Nineteenth
Cutting
Cuts
Among
Toes

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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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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.
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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.
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Lynching is color line murder.
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The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.
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The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
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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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A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.
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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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One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
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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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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 Afro-American is not a bestial race.
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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.
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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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The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way towards 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. Other considerations are of minor importance.
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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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The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.
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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
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The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.
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