“Our country's national crime is lynching.”

— Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law In America (speech)

“It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an "unwritten law" that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.”

— Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law In America (speech)