Page:Women of distinction.djvu/80

38 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 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. No history of the Afro-American of the future will be complete in which this woman's work has not a place. From the vantage ground of New York, and associated with the Age, the splendid work she began in the South Miss Wells hopes to continue until the victory is won. The extensive statement made by her in the New York Age of June 25, 1892, of the reasons which led to the suspension of her newspaper, and as an exhaustive statement of the true causes of lynch and mob law, was one of the clearest, most convincing and most pathetic expositions of fact made in recent times to the voluminous discussion of the race problem. It created a veritable sensation, and was referred to and discussed in hundreds of newspapers and thousands -of homes. It is a historic document, full of the pathos of awful truth.

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.