Quotes about Lynchings

Abraham Lincoln

Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the everyday news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creatures of climate … neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding states…. Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order

Even in 1837 there were already riots over slavery and race in a number of American Cities. What is particularly interesting about this quotation is Lincoln bemoaning the violance and contrasting the then present with the past when law and order prevailed. Even our greatest President has had a romantic view of the past with respect to law and order, as many Americans have done in almost every American era.

Republican Party

The fact that no lynchings of negroes occur in States where the Republican party is in power warrants us in the belief that these crimes are committed for political reasons

Ida B. Wells

The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased.

Ron Stallworth

It was extremely dangerous to be a black man in the KKK. If I'd been exposed, it could have all gone horribly wrong. The Klansmen were armed, and there was always a peril.

Ku Klux Klan

If it was necessary to liquidate someone to prove the Klan was not kidding, it would be done.

Most of the actions of the KKK over the years have violated the spirit and the laws of America. They are opposed to many of the Bill of Rights. There was a time, before the 1970s, where members literally got away with murder in the South. When Americas laws were enforced and KKK members who broke the law were jailed and sued for monetary damages, the Klan has a very tiny membership and is constantly under survelience.

Howard Association

As to the lynchings of negroes, by torture and burning alive, professing Christians in the South and West have emulated the horrible example of the Apaches, Comanches, and other Indian savages of a former generation

Named after penal reformer Johne Howard, 1726-1790. Howard Associations have since been organized in many countries.

Samuel Beckett

They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance.

Helen Keller

The continued lynchings and other crimes against negroes, whether in New England or the South, and unspeakable political exponents of white supremacy, according to all recorded history, augur ill for America's future.

Lynchings Quotes