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African Americans Quotes

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African Americans Quotes

“That evening there were police outside the building in which I spoke, and in the air the rising tension of race that is peculiar to the South. It had been rumored that some of the local citizenry were saying that I should be run out of town, and that one of the sheriffs agreed, saying, "Sure, he ought to be run out! It's bad enough to call Christ a bastard. But when he calls him a nigger, he's gone too far!"... ...Nevertheless, I remember with pleasure the courtesy and kindness of many of the students and faculty at Chapel Hill and their lack of agreement with the anti-Negro elements of the town. There I began to learn at the University of North Carolina how hard it is to be a white liberal in the South.”

PoetryRacismSouthPoetsAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesLiberals
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
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“The man was high yellow In public, afraid of himself, pretending his music Was material when in fact, it was the opposite: Like a breath that comes so quickly you know You’re breathing ether: either atmospheric And anonymous as the air against a window, Or indefinite & mute as a curtain of wind.”

WritingPoetryPoemsPoetsAfrican AmericansBlacksLangston Hughes
Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“A whole people's tumble into raw, untested century began with one man, penning his serpentine sojourn up from slavery-- I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but ... I must have been born somewhere and at some time. He began as another baby shoved directly into the wrong air.”

PoetryBirthPoemSlaveryAfrican AmericansBlacksBooker T Washington
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
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“Pathological people made the pathological ghetto, segregationists say. The pathological ghetto made pathological people, assimilationists say. To be antiracist is to say the political and economic conditions, not the people, in poor Black neighborhoods are pathological. Pathological conditions are making the residents sicker and poorer while they strive to survive and thrive, while they invent and reinvent cultures and behaviors that may be different but never inferior to those of residents in richer neighborhoods. But if the elite race-classes are judging the poor race-classes by their own cultural and behavioral norms, then the poor race-classes appear inferior. Whoever creates the norm creates the hierarchy and positions their own race-class at the top of the hierarchy.”

RaceClassAfrican AmericansBlacksGhettoNeighborhoodsPathologiesBlack Neighborhoods
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“Despite his increasing wealth (the money came in so fast he could scarcely keep track of it), Matthew maintained close contact with the merchants and manufacturers. He sent out private letters periodically to prominent men in the Southern business world in which he told of the marked psychological change that had come over the working classes of the South since the birth of the K. of N. He told how they had been discontented and on the brink of revolution when his organization rushed in and saved the South. Unionism and such destructive nostrums had been forgotten, he averred, when The Warning had revealed the latest danger to the white race. Of course, he always added, such work required large sums of money and contributions from conservative, substantial and public-spirited citizens were ever acceptable. At the end of each letter there appeared a suggestive paragraph pointing out the extent to which the prosperity of the New South was due to its "peculiar institutions" that made the worker race conscious instead of class conscious, and that with the passing of these "peculiar institutions" would also pass prosperity. This reasoning proved very effective, financially speaking.”

RaceClassRacismPropagandaAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesClass ConsciousnessRace Consciousness
Book:Black No More
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“When one-third of the population of the erstwhile Confederacy had consisted of the much-maligned Sons of Ham, the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation. The presence of the Negro as an under class had also made of Dixie a unique part of the United States. There, despite the trend to industrialization, life was a little different, a little pleasanter, a little softer. There was contrast and variety, which was rare in a nation where standardization had progressed to such an extent that a traveler didn't know what town he was in until someone informed him. The South had always been identified with the Negro, and vice versa, and its most pleasant memories treasured in song and story, were built around this pariah class. The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race pride and the studied arrogance of even the poorest half-starved white peon, were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses derived their only consolation and happiness from the fact that they were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than the mudsill blacks.”

AmericaClassRacismPrejudiceSouthAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesConfederacyAmerican South
Book:Black No More
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“In 1680, four years after the [Bacon] rebellion, Virginia passed the Law for Preventing Negro Insurrections. It restricted the movement of enslaved people outside plantations; anyone found without a pass would be tortured with twenty lashes "well laid on" before being returned. At a time when white servants and African slaves often worked side by side, the hand of the law reached in to divide them. Prison time awaited "English, and other white men and women intermarrying with negros or mulattos." Already any indentured white servant caught running away with an enslaved African person was liable for their entire lost term of service, meaning that the servant risked becoming permanently unfree. The law separated the members of the lowest class by color and lifted one higher than the other. The goal, as it has been ever since, was to offer just enough racial privileges for white workers to identify with their color instead of their class. The Virginia legislature ended the penalties imposed on rebels for the insurrection of 1676, but only the white ones, removing a source of lingering solidarity among them.”

LawRaceClassSlaveryDivisionAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsLawsWhites
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
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“These demographics presented real threats to white planters, including a potential cross-racial labor movement. Plantation work was close and intimate, and it fostered a troubling solidarity between the growing Black population and white indentured servants. White planters could not afford for such a dangerous bond to form--which is why in 1705 Virginia's legislature did as much to codify white privilege as it did to establish Black subjugation.”

ClassLaborSlaveryAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesWhite PrivilegeSlavesSlave Owners
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
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“I knew the houses were to be searched; and I expected it would be done by country bullies and the poor whites. I expected I knew nothing annoyed them so much as to see colored people living in comfort and respectability; so I made arrangements for them with especial care.... It was a grand opportunity for the low whites, who had no negroes of their own to scourge. They exulted in such a chance to exercise a little brief authority, and show their subserviency to the slaveholders; not reflecting that the power which trampled on the colored people also kept themselves in poverty, ignorance, and moral degradation.”

RaceClassSlaveryAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsSlaves
Book:Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
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“During the rush hours the sidewalks were crowded with laborers and domestic workers, many of them well past middle age, trudging patiently to their jobs and home again, sometimes as much as twelve miles. They knew why they walked, and the knowledge was evident in the way they carried themselves. And as I watched them I knew that there is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”

DignityCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksAlabamaMontgomerySacrificesSacrificingMontgomery Bus BoycottBoycotts
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“This growing self-respect has inspired the Negro with a new determination to struggle and sacrifice until first-class citizenship becomes a reality. This is the true meaning of the Montgomery Story. One can never understand the bus protest in Montgomery without understanding that there is a new Negro in the South, with a new sense of dignity and destiny.”

RaceDestinyRacismDignityIntegrationAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationMontgomery Bus Boycott
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Across the years the Negro has been a perpetual victim of economic exploitation. Prior to the Civil War the slaves worked under a system which offered neither compensation nor civil rights. Since emancipation the Negro American has continued to suffer under an essentially unreconstructed economy. He was freed without land or legal protection, and was made an outcast entitled only to the most menial jobs. Even the federal government that set him free failed to work out any long-range policy that would guarantee economic resources to a previously enslaved people--as much entitled to the land they had worked as were their former owners. The exploitation of the Negro population persisted through the Reconstruction period and continues down to the present day.”

MoneyEconomicsCivil RightsCivil WarExploitationAfrican AmericansBlacksCompensationReconstruction
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Nobody asked the Negro what he thunk about the whole business, by the way, nor the Indian, when I think of it, for neither of their thoughts didn't count, even through most of the squabbling was about them on the outside, for at bottom the whole business was about land and money, something nobody who was squabbling seemed to ever get enough of.”

MoneyRaceLandAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesNative AmericansIndians
Book:The Good Lord Bird
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“The Negro had never really been patient in the pure sense of the word. The posture of silent waiting was forced upon him psychologically because he was shackled physically. In the days of slavery, this suppression was openly, scientifically and consistently applied. Sheer physical force kept the Negro captive at every point. He was prevented from learning to read and write, prevented by laws actually inscribed in the statute books. He was forbidden to associate with other Negroes living on the same plantation, except when weddings or funerals took place. Punishment for any form of resistance or complaint about his condition could range from mutilation to death. Families were torn apart, friends separated, cooperation to improve their condition carefully thwarted. Fathers and mothers were sold from their children and children were bargained away from their parents. Young girls were, in many cases, sold to become the breeders of fresh generations of slaves. The slaveholders of America had devised with almost scientific precision their systems for keeping the Negro defenseless, emotionally and physically. With the ending of physical slavery after the Civil War, new devices were found to "keep the Negro in his place." It would take volumes to describe these methods, extending from birth in jim-crow hospitals through burial in jim-crow sections of cemeteries. They are too well known to require a catalogue here. Yet one of the revelations during the past few years is the fact that the straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South. The result has been a demeanor that passed for patience in the eyes of the white man, but covered a powerful impatience in the heart of the Negro.”

PatienceSlaveryCivil RightsPersecutionAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsImpatience
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.”

WarAmericaUnited StatesSlaveryCrueltyUsaUnited States Of AmericaAfrican AmericansTheftRace RelationsUsNative AmericansDelusions
Book:The Underground Railroad
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“It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice… there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others––especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!”

InspirationJoyHumanityDemocracyEmpowermentSocial JusticeAfrican AmericansPoor PeopleSocial MovementsServant LeadershipEconomic DisparityPolitical MovementsSocial InjusticeAntiracismImpoverishmentBlack Prophetic FirePolitical Motivation
Book:Black Prophetic Fire
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“White ain't nothing.' Mama's grip did not lessen. 'It is something, Cassie. White is something just like black is something. Everybody born on this Earth is something, and nobody, no matter what color is better than anybody else.' 'Then how come Mr. Simms don't know that.' 'Because he's one of those people who has to believe that white people are better than black people to make himself feel big.' I stared questionably at Mama, not really understanding. Mama squeezed my hadn't and explained further, 'You see, Cassie, many years ago, when our people were fist brought from Africa in chains to work as slaves in this country--' 'Like Big Ma's Papa and Mama?' Mama nodded. "Yes, baby. Like Papa Luke and Mama Rachael. Except they were born right here is Mississippi, but their grandparents were born in Africa. And when they came, there was some white people who thought that is was wrong for any people to be slaves. So the people who needed slaves to work in their fields and the people who were making money bringing slaves from Africa preached that black people weren't really people like white people were, so slavery was all right. They also said that slavery was good for us because it thought us to be good Christians, like the white people.' She sighed deeply, her voice fading into a distant whisper, 'But they didn't teach us Christianity to save our souls, but to teach us obedience. They were afraid of slave revolts and they wanted us to learn the Bible's teachings about slaves being loyal to their masters. But even teaching Christianity didn't make us stop wanting to be free and many slaves ran away.”

FreedomRaceChristianitySlaveryEqualityOppressionInequalityAfrican AmericansMississippiSlavesCivil Liberty
Author:Mildred D. Taylor
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“This determination of Negro Americans to win freedom from all forms of oppression springs from the same deep longing that motivates oppressed peoples all over the world. The rumblings of discontent in Asia and Africa are expressions of a quest for freedom and human dignity by people who have long been the victims of colonialism and imperialism. So in a real sense the racial crisis in America is a part of the larger world crisis.”

JusticeFreedomRaceOppressionColonialismAfrican AmericansImperialismEquityBlacks
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“When a subject people moves toward freedom, they are not creating a cleavage, but are revealing the cleavage which apologists of the old order have sought to conceal. It is not the movement for integration which is creating a cleavage in the United states today. The depth of the cleavage that existed, the true nature of which the moderates failed to see and make clear, is being revealed by the resistance to integration.”

FreedomRaceSeparationCivil RightsIntegrationAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationRace RelationsCleavage
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“If the American Negro and other victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for freedom, future generations will be the recipients of a desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. Violence is not the way.”

FreedomViolenceChaosCivil RightsOppressionBitternessOppressedAfrican AmericansBlacks
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them. It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, “Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.” Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children – children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm. I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him.”

FreedomConscienceSlaveryStealingAfrican AmericansBlacksRight And WrongSlaves
Book:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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“I thought about how Juneteenth is a holiday that inspires so much celebration, born from circumstances imbued with so much tragedy. Enslavers in Texas, and across the South, attempted to keep Black people in bondage for months, and theoretically years, after their freedom had been granted. Juneteenth, then, is both a day to solemnly remember what this country has done to Black Americans and a day to celebrate all that Black Americans have overcome. It is a reminder that each day this country must consciously make a decision to move toward freedom for all of its citizens, and that this is something that must be done proactively; it will not happen on its own. The project of freedom, Juneteenth reminds us, is precarious, and we should regularly remind ourselves how many people who came before us never got to experience it, and how many people there are still waiting.”

FreedomHistoryDemocracySlaveryCelebrationAfrican AmericansBlacksEmancipationAfrican American HistoryJuneteenth
Book:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
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“When I hear Marian Anderson sing, I am a STUFFless kind of thing, Heart is like the flying air, I cannot find it anywhere. Fingers tingle. I am cold And warm and young and very old. But, most, I am a STUFFless thing When I hear Marian Anderson sing.”

PoetryMusicPoemSingersAfrican AmericansBlacksMarian AndersonVocalists
Book:Bronzeville Boys and Girls: A Picture Book of Classic Poetry About Urban Life and Childhood for Kids
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“The Jackson 5 shook off the last song and readied for another sortie. The smallest Jackson movement, every tremble, elicited another wave of squeals from the Garden. "I'd like to talk to y'all tonight," Michael said, "about the blues." Carney chuckled--the kid was ten. "The blues?" Marlon or maybe Jermaine asked. "Yeah, the blues. Don't nobody have the blues like me. I may be young, but I know what it's all about." The boys bit into "Who's Lovin' You" and the building rattled. The girls screamed. There were rumors about guys the mob had rubbed out and buried in the concrete foundation below. The noise would've woken them up. Carney shouldn't have laughed. What ten-year-old black child didn't know the blues?”

MusicConcertsAfrican AmericansBlacksMusiciansBluesMichael JacksonJackson 5
Book:Crook Manifesto
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“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands to-day not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.”

ArtAmericaBeautyMusicAfrican AmericansBlacksFolk Songs
Book:The Souls of Black Folk
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“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.”

AcceptanceRacismSuperiorityAfrican AmericansRace RelationsInferiorityWhite People
Book:The Fire Next Time
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“All that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in my heart,—nay, blame me not if I see the world thus darkly through the Veil,—and my soul whispers ever to me saying, “Not dead, not dead, but escaped; not bond, but free.” No bitter meanness now shall sicken his baby heart till it die a living death, no taunt shall madden his happy boyhood. Fool that I was to think or wish that this little soul should grow choked and deformed within the Veil! I might have known that yonder deep unworldly look that ever and anon floated past his eyes was peering far beyond this narrow Now. In the poise of his little curl-crowned head did there not sit all that wild pride of being which his father had hardly crushed in his own heart? For what, forsooth, shall a Negro want with pride amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows? Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.”

DeathFreedomLossGriefRacismPrejudiceMourningAfrican AmericansBlacksDeath Of A Child
Book:The Souls of Black Folk
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“I remember my sister’s last hoorah. She joined all the black people I’m tired of losing, All the dead from parts of Florida, Ferguson, Brooklyn, Charleston, Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, wherever the names alive are Like the names in graves. I am someone With a good memory & better imagination.”

DeathPoetryLossPoemMemoryRemembranceAfrican AmericansBlacks
Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“There is in Moscow a great curiosity for things American, and a great sympathy for things Negro. So, being both an American and a Negro, I am met everywhere with friendly questions from children and adults as to how we live at home. Is there really a crisis, with people hungry and ragged when there are in America so many factories, so much technique, so much wheat, and cotton and livestock? How can that be? Do they actually kill people in electric chairs? Actually lynch Negroes? Why? The children in the Moscow streets, wise little city children, will oft times gather around you if you are waiting for a streetcar, or looking into a shop window. They will take your hand and ask you about the Scottsboro boys, or if you like the Soviet Union and are going to stay forever. Sometimes as you pass a group of children playing, they will stop and exclaim, "Negro!" But in wonder and surprise a long ways from the insulting derision of the word "Nigger" in the mouths of America's white children. Here, the youth in the schools are taught to respect all races.”

ChildrenRacismPrejudiceSoviet UnionAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsMoscowUssr
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
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“What kind of a person could kill a Black child and then kill another Black child and then kill another Black child and then kill another Black child and then kill another Black child and then kill another Black child and stay above suspicion? What about the police? What about somebody Black? What sixteen year old would say no to a cop? What seven year old would say no thanks to me? What is an overreaction to murder? What kind of a person could kill a Black child and then kill a Black child and then kill a Black child? What kind of a person are you? What kind of a person am I? What makes you so sure? What kind of a person could save a Black child? What kind of a people will lay down its life for the lives of our children? What kind of a people are we?”

ChildrenDeathPoetryPoemMurderAfrican AmericansBlacks
Author:June Jordan
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“Don't you believe in nonviolence?' I asked. "'Yes,' said Miss Minnie, 'when the other parties are nonviolent, too. But when I have just come out of a funeral parlor from looking at a little small black boy shot three times by a full-grown cop, I think it is about time I raised my pocketbook and strike at least one blow for freedom.”

ChildrenViolenceRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksPolice BrutalityRace Relations
Book:The Return of Simple
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“To P.J. (2 yrs old who sed write a poem for me in Portland, Oregon) if i cud ever write a poem as beautiful as u little 2/yr/old/brotha, I wud laugh, jump, leap up and touch the stars cuz u be the poem i try for each time i pick up a pen and paper. u. and Morani and Mungu be our blue/blk/stars that will shine on our lives and makes us finally BE. if i cud ever write a poem as beautiful as u, little 2/yr/old/brotha, poetry wud go out of bizness.”

LoveChildrenPoetryAfrican AmericansBlacknessBlack Is Beautiful
Book:It's a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistuhs
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“You don’t know they’ll be white. Maybe the Cloisters is full of Black people, and you’re the right person to knock on the door.” I could hear a cross laugh in Keller’s quiet voice. “I’m pretty sure that the people who set up shop in a castle are going to be white. Museums: last refuge of the ruling class.”

MuseumsElitesAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesRuling ClassCloistersElite Class
Book:All the Water in the World
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“One can tell a great deal about a country by what it remembers. By what graces the wall of its museums. And what monuments have privileged placement in parks or central traffic intersections. And what holidays and patriotic songs are the bane and balm to generations of school children. Yet one learns even more about a nation by what it forgets. What moments of evil, disappointment, and defeat are downplayed or eliminated from the national narratives. Often in the United States the issues of race and the centrality of African American culture are given short shrift in textbooks, popular chronicles, and national memories.”

RaceHistoryRacismMemoryMuseumsAfrican AmericansBlacksMonuments
Book:A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
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“This process taught us to test and challenge the prevailing wisdom about the paucity of African American artifacts. What we discovered was a paucity of effort and creativity rather than a scarcity of collections. I hope that our efforts will spur other institutions to embrace community-driven collecting and commit the resources to look inside the basements and garages for material that was once deemed less important to the interpretive agenda of museums. Not every cultural organization will discover items from Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, or Marian Anderson, but every museum that makes the effort will find discover items from Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, or Marian Anderson, but every museum, but every museum that makes the effort will find objects that document the lives, the work, the resiliency, and the dreams of their community.”

HistoryCollectionsMuseumsAfrican AmericansBlacksCollectingAfrican American HistoryCommunities
Book:A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
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