Ida Quotes

“Du Bois spoke about the relationship of black disenfranchisement to cheap surplus labor in the South; Celia Parker Woolley delineated the relationship between race, women’s rights, and labor. Wells-Barnett began her talk by enumerating the 3,284 men, women, and children who had been lynched since Reconstruction, and she illustrated the relationship between lynching and the lack of citizenship rights.”
― Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

“Now he and other former allies, such as newspaper publisher Oswald Garrison Villard, began to question Roosevelt’s emotional stability and subsequently the leadership of Washington, who continued to remain loyal to him.”
― Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

“Local Democrats did their part by distributing a poster that pictured Ferdinand with exaggerated Negroid features: a fly-in-the-buttermilk reminder for those who customarily voted straight Republican tickets.”
― Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

“Wells-Barnett’s experience with the ways that lynching victims were criminalized, and her progressive belief in the ability of persons to change for the better, gave her another perspective.”
― Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions

“Ida was clearly exasperated by the fact that despite the motives that accompanied the lynching statistics published year after year—which Ida included in nearly every article—“law-abiding and fair-minded people should so persistently shut their eyes to the facts.” Ida continued, “This record, easily within the reach of every one who wants it,” made it “inexcusable” for anyone not to debunk the presumption from the beginning.”
― Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

“Added to residential segregation was the powerlessness of blacks to keep vice out of their communities.”
― Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching