For I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart. ~Mary McLeod Bethune
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise. ~Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise," And Still I Rise
For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place. ~Maya Angelou
We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice. ~Carter Woodson, 1926
This being Black History Month, I would like to ask people to celebrate the similarities and not focus on the differences between people of color and not of color. ~Lynn Swann
The African-American experience is one of the most important threads in the American tapestry. ~Bill Frist
I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history. ~Morgan Freeman
The African race is a rubber ball. The harder you dash it to the ground, the higher it will rise. ~African Proverb
I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me. ~Muhammad Ali
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. ~Frederick Douglass
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.
~Langston Hughes
I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.... Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world - I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. ~Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me, 1928
Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face. ~Carol Moseley-Braun
Freedom is never given; it is won. ~A. Philip Randolph
Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land. ~Cornel West, "Nihilism in America," Race Matters, 1993
There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution. ~Frederick Douglass
You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation. ~Billie Holiday
Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power. ~Barbara Jordan
If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything... that smacks of discrimination or slander. ~Mary McLeod Bethune
Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color. ~Author Unknown
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. ~Frederick Douglass
We are the wrong people of the wrong skin in the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about? ~June Jordan
We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived. ~June Jordan
No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. ~Booker T. Washington
In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. ~Booker T. Washington
The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down. ~Thurgood Marshall
It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep. ~Malcolm X
Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion. ~William Lloyd Garrison
Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list. ~Dennis Leary
One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings. ~Franklin Thomas
To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow. ~William Faulkner
Racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination. ~Author Unknown
Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can. ~Arthur Ashe
I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. ~Ralph Ellison
I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. ~Harper Lee
The time is always right to do what is right. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others.... One ever feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. ~W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903
We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers. Our abundance has brought us neither peace of mind nor serenity of spirit. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our nation is a rainbow - red, yellow, brown, black, and white - and we're all precious in God's sight. ~Jesse Jackson, speech at Democratic National Convention, San Francisco, 17 July 1984
"We, the people." It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787 I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in "We, the people." ~Barbara Jordan
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up. ~Rosa Parks
[W]hen you first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are), and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro... when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" - then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. ~Oprah Winfrey
The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. ~W.E.B. DuBois
We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. ~W.E.B. DuBois
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. ~W.E.B. DuBois
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. ~Toni Morrison
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. ~Abraham Lincoln
You can not possibly have a broader basis for government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights. ~William Lloyd Garrison
I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women join the unqualified men in running our government. ~Cissy Farenthold
Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity. ~Desmond Tutu
Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason. ~Abraham Joshua Heschel
Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart. ~Countess of Blessington
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ~Robert F. Kennedy
The majority of the Negroes who took part in the year-long boycott of Montgomery's buses were poor and untutored; but they understood the essence of the Montgomery movement; one elderly woman summed it up for the rest. When asked after several weeks of walking whether she was tired, she answered: "My feet is tired, but my soul is at rest." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Even when the polls are open to all, Negroes have shown themselves too slow to exercise their voting privileges. There must be a concerted effort on the part of Negro leaders to arouse their people from their apathetic indifference.... In the past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, it is a form of moral and political suicide. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Negro is the child of two cultures - Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion. Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up.... The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber.... To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen. ~Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992
My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I'm going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. ~Paul Robeson
When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. ~Harriet Tubman, on her first escape from slavery, 1845
I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit. ~Ida B. Wells
As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say... as long as he looks to white folks for approval... then he ain't never gonna find out who he is and what he's about. ~August Wilson, .Jr.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance. ~Maya Angelou
Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization. ~W.E.B. DuBois
Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril. ~William Lloyd Garrison
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. ~Harper Lee
Prejudice is the child of ignorance. ~William Hazlitt
I will always remember my delight when Mrs. Georgia Gilmore - an unlettered woman of unusual intelligence - told how an operator demanded that she get off the bus after paying her fare and board it again by the back door, and then drove away before she could get there. She turned to Judge Carter and said: "When they count the money, they do not know Negro money from white money." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
The problem with hatred and violence is that they intensity the fears of the white majority, and leave them less ashamed of their prejudices toward Negroes. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
There comes a time when people get tired of being plunged into the abyss of exploitation and nagging injustice. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
When the Negro was completely an underdog, he needed white spokesmen. Liberals played their parts in this period exceedingly well.... But now that the Negro has rejected his role as an underdog, he has become more assertive in his search for identity and group solidarity; he wants to speak for himself. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, "There lived a great people - a black people - who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization." This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Harriet Tubman
Dr. John Henrik Clarke "STAY FOCUS"
Queen Mother Moore "A Winchester Rifle should have a place of honor in every
[African-American] home."
Ida B. Wells-Barnett "No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow."
Alice Walker "First, my people must be taught the knowledge of self. Then and only then will they be able to understand others and that which surrounds them. Anyone who does not have a knowledge of self is considered a victim of either amnesia or unconsciousness and is not very competent. The lack of knowledge of self is a prevailing condition among my people here in America. Gaining the knowledge of self makes us unite into a great unity. Knowledge of self makes you take on the great virtue of learning."
Honorable Elijah Muhammad "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blow, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass "African-Americans have not yet learn that no other people have continued worshipping another's God, especially their slave master's god or gods and freed themselves from cultural and physical genocide. Why should Africans and African-Americans be the only exception to this historic reality?"
Dr. Ben Carson"Freedom is to come to the Negro, not as a bequest, but as a conquest."
Carter G. Woodson "Judaism, Christianity & Islam are innovations on fragments from the periphery of the African cultural and spiritual system."
Dr. Leonard Jeffries "The thing to do is to get organized; keep separated and you will be exploited, you will be robbed, you will be killed. Get organized and you will compel the world to respect you."
Marcus Garvey "Remain separated and you will suffer; Together we are invincible !"
Haywood Barber, Sr. "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Those who seek temporary security rather than basic liberty deserve neither...
Queen Mother Moore
"Sure there are a few good whites just as much as there are a few bad Blacks. However what we are concerned here with is group attitudes and group politics. The exception does not make a lie or the rule - it merely substantiates it."
Steve Biko "I started with this idea in my head, "there's two things I've got a right to....death or liberty?."
Mama Harriet Tubman "You're not an African because you're born in Africa. You're an African because Africa is born in you. It's in your genes.... your DNA....your entire biological make up. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it is. However, if you were to embrace this truth with open arms....my, my, my....what a wonderful thing."
Marimba Ani "To illuminate our real African History, to clarify our African Present, to brilliantly project our African Future."
Mama Kefa Nephthys "Truth crush to earth will rise again stronger than ever."
Dr. Leonard Jeffries
Malcolm X "Ignore the ignorance of the ignorant"
Unknown "What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce at the output end of the process real Black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society."
Steve Biko "I grew up like a neglected weed, ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Now that I've been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is."
Mama Harriet Tubman "Two wrongs don't make a right....but it makes things even."
Lana "Isis" Drakes "The only protection against injustice in man is power.....physical, financial and scientific."
Marcus Garvey "Win or lose, we win by raising the issues."
Charlotta Bass "The most disastrous aspect of colonization which you are the most relunctant to release from your mind is their colonization of the image of God."
Dr. Frances Cress-Welsing "Peace if possible, War if necessary."
Dr. Khallid A. Muhammad
"My bones are tired. Not tired of struggling, but tired of oppression."
Queen Mother Moore"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today."
Malcolm X "Powerful people never educate powerless people in what they need that they can use to take the power away from powerful people; it's too much to expect. If I was in power, I would not educate people in how to take my powers away."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke "I never ran my train off the track. And I never lost a passenger"
Mama Harriet Tubman "Lifting as we climb"
National Association of Colored Women "We have to win"
Jama "...education has but one honorable purpose, one alone, everything else is a waste of time......that is to train the student to be a proper handler of power."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke "Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their operation - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude."
Steve Biko "One is fully conscious when he or she is the results of having been informed and instructed by the experience of his or her ancestors and use that knowledge to master, understand and become able to create institutions that allow him or her to live in harmony with the rest of nature and the universe."
Professor James Small "Just because a cat has kittens in the oven, that doesn't make them biscuits."
Malcolm X "God created black people and black people created style."
George C. Wolfe "For the 'human race' to get along sounds like a wonderful thing......yet and still, Africans as a people globally must first get along. Then and only then can we realistically get along truthfully with any other race. Anything other than that......you're just fooling yourself."
Unknown "The Lord who told me to take care of my people meant me to do it just as long as I live, and so I did what he told me."
Mama Harriet Tubman "Every form of true education trains the student in self-reliance"
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
Carter G. Woodson "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."
Bill Cosby "African people need to stop shouting 'nationtime' until they are clear about the responsibilities of running a nation."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke "No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant."
Frederick Douglass "Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research."
Malcolm X "Look at you....chasing your tail....running after the dollar bill as if it's going to solve your problems personally or collectively as a people. 'Black America' is in the top 10 list of richest nations in the world. Still....look at us. Disrespected, mistreated and down trodden to say the least. Why? Because we don't study our past and present to create a better future with our resources. We have to study our history....It's mandatory."
Lloyd "Amen-Ra" Spivey
Dr. John Henrik Clarke The economic philosophy of black nationalism only means that our people need to be re-educated into the importance of controlling the economy of the community in which we live, which means that we won't have to constantly be involved in picketing and boycotting other people in other communities in order to get jobs
Malcolm X "Black Consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God's plan in creating Black people black."
Steve Biko "When you deal with the past, you're dealing with history, you're dealing actually with the origin of a thing. When you know the origin, you know the cause It's impossible for you and me to have a balanced mind in this society without going into the past, because in this particular society, as we function and fit into it right now, we're such an underdog, we're trampled upon, we're looked upon as almost nothing. Now if we don't go into the past and find out how we got this way, we will think that we were always this way. And if you think that you were always in the condition that you're in right now, it's impossible for you to have too much confidence in yourself, you become worthless, almost nothing. But when you go back into the past and find out where you once were, then you will know that you once had attained a higher level, had made great achievements, contributions to society, civilization, science, and so forth. And you know that if you once did it you can do it again; you automatically get the incentive, the inspiration and the energy necessary to duplicate what our forefathers did."
Malcolm X
"Our purpose in life is to leave a legacy for our children and our children's children. For this reason, we must correct history that at present denies our humanity and self-respect."
"Now consciousness, what is consciousness? Consciousness is being aware of one's surroundings, recognizing the existence, truth or fact of something; being aware of the very moment, the very instant that you are in; being aware of how you affect the human social, political, and natural ecology you are a part of and how it affects you. Consciousness is being informed and instructed through your groups peculiar culture on the effects of the varied ecologies on your immediate and distant ancestors, and to be aware of their interpretation of that experience."
Professor James Small "Billions of dollars a year is pumped into the propaganda machine to keep black people ignorant of the truth about their history and condition."
Unknown "The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your 'civilization'."
Booker T. Washington "If you have achieved any level of success, then pour it into someone else. Success is not success without a successor."
T. D. Jakes "I was afraid because I was ignorant."
Tawana Brawley "All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishments of an African empire, so strong and powerful as to compel the respect of mankind, but we in our lifetime can so work and act as to make the dream a possibility within another generation."
Marcus Garvey "Love of self comes first. The one who loves everybody is the one who does not love anyone."
Honorable Elijah Muhammad "POWER RESPECTS POWER."
Raaq (Roc)
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