Ida B. Wells

"We must never give up the fight for freedom."

"Justice will prevail if we remain steadfast."

"I am proud of the life I have lived."

"Truth is the light that guides us forward."

"The quiet resistance of the Negro is more powerful than all the noisy agitation in the world."

"I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap."

"The day may be approaching when the whole nation will recognize Negro citizenship in the same sense in which it is recognized for other Americans."

"Brave men do not invent laws to stop the mouth of women."

"Tell the world the facts and the country will be saved."

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

"Our country's national crime is lynching. It has become popular to treat mobs as the real criminals."

"I felt I owed it to myself and to my race to tell the facts."

"The remedy for wrongs is to forget them, but that is not the remedy which justice demands."

"We cannot let our rulers kill us up by thousands and tens of thousands without raising a hand."

"There must be a remedy even for lynching. I would not have believed it had not I lived to see the day when the entire American people, North and South, would be roused by the cry of the lynched Negro."

"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."

"Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning."

"Justice is rarely the concern of the mob."

"Negro Americans have endured so much for so long, that it requires faith to believe we can yet rise."

"The press of the whole country has by false statements created a condition of public sentiment that has resulted in mob violence."

"I would rather go down in history as one lone Negro woman who dared to tell the truth than a whole race of people who believed a lie."

"Self-preservation is the first law of nature."

"The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every Black home."

"We cannot say we love our country and sit idle while the strong kill the weak."

"Agitation is the appropriate labor of the present."

"No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States, has ever allowed its courts of justice to become instruments for the perpetration of judicial lynching."

"If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this record and causing the demand for justice to be satisfied, I shall feel I have done my duty."

"The fact is that in this caste system, the Negro is not a citizen."

"One woman alone can accomplish little."

"The mob spirit has increased with alarming frequency."