T. Thomas Fortune

“ No other woman of the race occupies to-day a better position to do good work, or is more generously endowed to perform it. Strong in her devotion to race, strong in the affections of her people, and strong in the estimation of influential men, co-workers with her in the cause, with all the future hers, if she fails to impress her personality upon the time in which she lives, whose fault will it be? ”

“ The Genius of Universal Emancipation is the voice of God, and cannot be stifled. The suppression of Miss Wells' newspaper at Memphis possibly marked a well-defined period in the contention upon which we have entered to wrest from wicked men the justice denied us as men and citizens, and she should consider it an honor that such a calamity came upon her in the prosecution of a cause so sacred. ”

“ Only in Christian countries has woman secured a measure of equality with the forceful agents that make the world's history. In pagan countries she is still the idol of the harem or the beast of burden for the peasant. ”

“ Few persons have brought more enthusiasm to their work than Miss Wells. She properly estimated the work of the race newspaper in educating the people to a proper conception of their rights and duties as citizens, and labored with an eye single to this object. The people seemed to feel the unselfish nobility and sustained it as they had never before sustained a newspaper. Of course it was natural that Miss Wells should take a strong stand against mob law. ”

“ A greater responsibility could not have fallen upon shoulders so young and upon one less experienced as a bread-winner, for she had had indulgent parents, whose chief delight was to give their children all the advantages of school which had been denied them through a cruel and barbarous institution. ”

“ The concerted attempt of many Southern white men to put a padlock on the lips of freedom of speech will prevail no more in the case of Miss Wells than in the case of Elijah Lovejoy at Alton, and of William Lloyd Garrison in Baltimore. ”

“ The alarums of internecine strife were dying away in subdued echoes, in which the sorrows of a great people were commingled with abounding joys. It was a period in which it was well to be born, if a man is a product in the development of his character of contemporaneous as well as prenatal influences. ”

“ Although not a graduate, because of reasons previously stated, Rust University conferred upon Miss Wells the degree of Master of Arts at the commencement exercises of 1892.
As a writer Miss Wells lacks in the beauties and graces affected by acamedicians. Her style is one of great strength and directness. She is so much in earnest that there is almost an entire absence of the witty and humorous in what she writes. She handles her subjects more as a man than as a woman ”

“ It is a notable fact that in the anti-slavery struggle women contribited almost as largely as men to the moulding of public opinion necessary to the manumission of the slave. Women such as Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sojourner Truth, Lydia Maria Childs, Anna Dickinson and others were towers of strength as well as inspiration. ”