Ida B. Wells Quotes
Lynching is color line murder.
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. "Lynching, Our National Crime." Proceedings of the National Negro Conference 1909, 1909, p. 174.
William Z. Foster, the 1928 communist presidential candidate, was arrested because his party’s leaflet contained this “inflammatory” slogan.
In 1848 a pro-slavery mob in Washington DC Gamaliel Bailey's anti-slavery publication, The National Era, which soon thereafter was the publisher of the serialized Uncle Tom's Cabin. Senator John P. Hale introduced a bill in the Senate outlawing rioting in the District of Columbia. The Southern Senators objected violently and this served as a catalyst for one the for the most extensive and bitter public debate that had ever been held on the slavery issue.
In 1911 the citizens of Honea Path, SC, led by Joshua W. Ashleigh, the State Legislator representing the district and his son, the editor of the local newspaper, dismembered and lynched a Black man, Willis Jackson. Some South Carolinians were distressed and asked the Governor to initiate and investigation. See his later statement on lynching in 1930.
Reacting to the slogan, "Impeach Earl Warren:"
Wilson, a history and government professor and college president before politics, was has been accused of being one of the most racist Presidents since Reconstruction. Prior to his Presidency, the Federal Government had been making steady progress in hiring African Americans. Under Wilson there was a wholesale firing of a large proportion of them. Some apologists argue that his League of Nations and other major aspirations required the votes and cooperation of Southern Senators who insisted that many of the blacks be terminated. At the same time, the KKK was near the zenith of its membership and political power and was an intimidating force. Wilson’s home state of New Jersey not only had a large KKK membership but there were lynching of Blacks in his own state and when Governor and President he never asked for any anti-lynching legislation.
The Muslim Brotherhood had won the Presidency in the first Egyptian democratic election shortly after the ouster of Mubarak when they were the only party that was organized. However, after one year of government, their performance was so bad that critics like El Baradei offered strong public criticism—especially of the preoccupation with Islam with little government attention given to freedom, human rights, and the economy which was in terrible shape. This triggered many protests and demonstrations in Tahrir Square where intimidation of protesters was accomplished by beatings and lynchings in the midst of a large number of Brotherhood supporters who would infiltrate the crowd. The Islamic fundamentalists were particularly harsh on female protesters who were beaten, had their clothes ripped off, and in many cases raped. A few days after this article was published there was an insurrection of huge crowds of Egyptians and the Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi was forced to resign.
16 white miners were charged with riot, arson, murder and robbery. However the local white jury acquitted them all. Southern white murders of Blacks were not the only terrible crimes that were openly committed with impunity.
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Over the course of a lifetime dedicated to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, Wells arguably became the most famous Black woman in America.
