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 Quote

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 Quote

I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way... so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

The Afro-American is not a bestial race.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

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 Quote

The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

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 Quote

The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

The white man's dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.
- Ida B. Wells Quote

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.
- Ida B. Wells Quote