Ida B. Wells Quotes
The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.
Wells, Ida B. Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. The New York Age Print, 1892, p. 24.
The George W. Bush Administration had initiated a secret wiretapping program without informing the Congressional Intelligence Committees as required by the statute or requesting a change in the law from the Judiciary Committee. New York Times, however, had discovered the program and published its existence. This was the way that Congress found out about the program that seemed to violate the law. The Attorney General however was critical of New York Times, and expressed concern that the press had published secret material.
The poem was in a dialect. “Gret” was “great” and “pint” was “point”.
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.
