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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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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 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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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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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
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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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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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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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Lynching is color line murder.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
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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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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The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
Ida B. Wells
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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.
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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Virtue knows no color line.
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 appetite grows for what it feeds on.
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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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