Ida B. Wells - Negro Quotes

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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
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
In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed.

Ida B. Wells
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
During the slave regime, the Southern white man owned the Negro body and soul.... While slaves were scourged mercilessly. the white owner rarely permitted his anger to go so far as to take a life, which would entail upon him a loss of several hundred dollars.. But Emancipation came and the vested interests of the white man in the Negro's body were lost.

Ida B. Wells
The Negro has suffered much and is willing to suffer more. He recognizes that the wrongs of two centuries cannot be righted in a day, and he tries to bear his burden with patience for today and be hopeful for tomorrow.

Ida B. Wells
Nobody in this section of the country believes in the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. 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
The Negro has been too long associated with the white man not to have copied his vices as well as his virtues.

Ida B. Wells