Frederick Douglass, whom Wells called “Old Man Eloquent,” acknowledged her leadership in a letter of 1892 about her “paper on the lynch abomination.” “There has been no word equal to it in convincing power,” he wrote. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give what you know and testify from actual knowledge. . . . Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by
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