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One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.

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
Justice
Dies
Fighting
Better
Trap
Like
Traps
Rats
Injustice
Dog

More quotes by Ida B. Wells

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Virtue knows no color line.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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The Afro-American is not a bestial race.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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The appetite grows for what it feeds on.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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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
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.
Ida B. Wells
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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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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
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The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
Ida B. Wells
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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