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Ida B. Wells-Barnett Biography

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“I also found that what the white man of the South practiced for himself, he assumed to be unthinkable in white women. They could and did fall in love with the pretty mulatto and quadroon girls as well as black ones, but they professed an inability to imagine white women doing the same thing with Negro and mulatto men. Whenever they did so and were found out, the cry of rape was raised, and the lowest element of the white South was turned loose to wreak its fiendish cruelty on those too weak to help themselves.”

HypocrisyLynchingRace Relations In America1920False Allegations Of RapeTo Tell The Truth Freely
Book:Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
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“Whatever the question up for discussion as to wrongs, injustice, inequality, maladministration of the law, Miss Anthony would always say, 'Well, now when women get the ballot all that will be changed.' So I asked her one day, 'Miss Anthony, do you really believe that the millennium is going to come when women get the ballot? Knowing women as I do, and their petty outlook on life, although I believe that it is right that they should have the vote, I do not believe that the exercise of the vote is going to change women's nature nor the political situation.' Miss Anthony seemed a little bit startled, but she did not make any contention on that point.”

SuffrageWomen S SuffrageSusan B Anthony1898
Book:Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
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“The next morning the newspapers carried the news that while our meeting was being held there had been staged in Paris, Texas, one of the most awful lynchings and burnings this country has ever witnessed. A Negro had been charged with ravishing and murdering a five-year-old girl. He had been arrested and imprisoned while preparations were made to burn him alive. The local papers issued bulletins detailing the preparations, the schoolchildren had been given a holiday to see a man burned alive, and the railroads ran excursions and brought people of the surrounding country to witness the event, which was in broad daylight with the authorities aiding and abetting this horror. The dispatches told in detail how he had been tortured with red-hot irons searing his flesh for hours before finally the flames were lit which put an end to his agony. They also told how the mob fought over the hot ashes for bones, buttons, and teeth for souvenirs.”

LynchingRace In America1863Light From The Human Torch
Book:Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
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“Haiti as an independent republic accepted the invitation extended to her along with other nations, and erected a building on the World's Fair grounds. She placed Frederick Douglass in charge of this building to represent the Haitian government. Mr. Douglass had been sent as minister to Haiti from this country a few years before this, and had so won the confidence of this little black republic that it in turn gave him the honor of being in charge of their exhibit. Had it not been for this, Negroes of the United States would have had no part nor lot in any official way in the World's Fair. For the United States government had refused her Negro citizens participation therein.”

Racism In AmericaHaitiRace In AmericaFrederick Douglass19701893 World S FairTo The Seeker Of TruthWorld S Columbian Exposition
Book:Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
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“South Carolina had thirteen lynchings last year, ten were charged with assault on white women, one with horse stealing and two with being impudent to white women. The first of the ten charged with rape, named John Peterson, was declared by the white woman in the case to be the wrong man, but the mob said a crime had been committed and somebody had to hang for it. So John Peterson, being the available ‘somebody,’ was hanged. At Columbia, South Carolina, July 30th, a similar charge was made, and three Negroes were hanged one after another because they said they wanted to be sure they got the right one.”

Race And Racism In AmericaSouth CarolinaLynching19701893Extrajudicial ExecutionLast Days In Britain
Book:Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
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