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Blacks Quotes

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Blacks Quotes

“Nine Negro boys in Alabama were on trial for their lives when I got back from Cuba and Haiti. The famous Scottsboro "rape" case was in full session. I visited those boys in the death house at Kilby Prison, and I wrote many poems about them. One of those poems was: CHRIST IN ALABAMA Christ is a Nigger, Beaten and black-- O, bare your back. Mary is His Mother-- Mammy of the South, Silence your mouth. God's His Father-- White Master above, Grant us your love. Most holy bastard Of the bleeding mouth: Nigger Christ On the cross of the South.”

PoetryPoemSouthTrialsAfrican AmericansBlacksAlabamaWrongful ConvictionScottsboro Boys
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
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“Dream of Freedom There’s a dream in the land With its back against the wall. By muddled names and strange Sometimes the dream is called. There are those who claim This dream for theirs alone— A sin for which, we know They must atone. Unless shared in common Like sunlight and like air, The dream will die for lack Of substance anywhere. The dream knows no frontier or tongue, The dream no class or race. The dream cannot be kept secure In any one locked place. This dream today embattled, With its back against the wall— To save the dream for one, It must be saved for ALL.”

PoetryFreedomPoemAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationBrown V Board Of Education
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
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“Between the tenets of those two men [W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington], a race strived to untangle its convoluted root, urged its whole self forward, and hurtled toward the door America had fought so hard to keep closed.”

AmericaPoetryPoemEqualityAfrican AmericansBlacksBooker T WashingtonW E B Du Bois
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
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“We’d like a list of what we lost Think of those who landed in the Atlantic The sharkiest of waters Bonnetheads and thrashers Spinners and blacktips We are made of so much water Bodies of water Bodies walking upright on the mud at the bottom The mud they must call nighttime Oh there was some survival Life After life on the Atlantic—this present grief So old we see through it So thick we can touch it And Jesus said of his wound Go on, touch it I don’t have the reach I’m not qualified I can’t swim or walk or handle a hoe I can’t kill a man Or write it down A list of what we lost The history of the wound The history of the wound That somebody bought them That somebody brought them To the shore of Virginia and then Inland Into the land of cliché I’d rather know their faces Their names My love yes you Whether you pray or not If I knew your name I’d ask you to help me Imagine even a single tooth I’d ask you to write that down But there’s not enough ink I’d like to write a list of what we lost. Think of those who landed in the Atlantic, Think of life after life on the Atlantic— Sweet Jesus. A grief so thick I could touch it. And Jesus said of his wound, Go on, touch it. But I don’t have the reach. I’m not qualified. And you? How’s your reach? Are you qualified? Don’t you know the history of the wound? Here is the history of the wound: Somebody brought them. Somebody bought them. Though I know who caught them, sold them, bought them, I’d rather focus on their faces, their names.”

PoetryPoemSlaveryAfrican AmericansBlacksSlavesSlave ShipsMiddle Passage
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
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“Possibly twilight makes blackness dangerous Darkness. Probably all my encounters Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say, A nigga can survive. Something happened In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens Almost everywhere in this country every day. Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters. You won't admit it. The names alive are like the names In graves.”

DeathPoetryPoemSurvivalAfrican AmericansBlacksBlack Lives Matter
Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“Glad someone shot deserved to be shot finally, George Wallace. After you send your basket of balms And berries for the girls the bomb buried in Birmingham, After you add your palms to the psalms & palm covered Caskets of the girls the bomb buried in Birmingham, I’ll muster a pinch of prayer for you. You are the blind Protagonist of a story that begins, “In my previous life My work involved returning runaway slaves to slavery,” And ends with the image of a black nurse pushing Your old ass in a wheelchair. Can you guess what black Folk passing empty cotton fields feel, George Wallace? I damn you with the opposite of that feeling. I keep thinking I’m confessing for the first time, the reason I fear you, And you keep asking why I’m telling this old story again.”

DeathPoetryFearPoemRacismMurderAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesGeorge Wallace
Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“To the Po'lice In case you are wondering the answer is yes: you have hurt us. Deeply. Just as you intended: you and those who sent you. You do know by now that you do not send yourself? I imagine your Designers sitting back in the shadows laughing as we weep. Though usually devoid of feeling, they are experiencing a sensation they almost enjoy: they get to witness, by twisted enchantment, dozens of strong black mothers weeping. They planned and nurtured your hatred and fear and focused the kill shot. Then watched you try to explain your innocence on TV. It is entertainment for them. They chuckle and drink Watching you squirm. They have tied you up in a bag of confusion from which you will never escape. It’s true you are white, but you are so fucking poor, and dumb, to boot, they say. A consideration that turns them pink with glee. (They have so many uses planned for the poor, white, and dumb: you would be amazed). You and the weeping mothers have more in common than you might think: the mothers know this. They have known you far longer than you have known them. After centuries, even those in the shadows, your masters, offer little mystery. If you could find your true courage you might risk everything to sit within a circle, surrounded by these women. Their eyes red from weeping, their throats raw. (They might strike you too, who could swear they wouldn’t?) Their sons are dead and it was you who did the deed. Scary enough. But within that enclosure Naked to their grief Is where you must center If you are ever To be freed.”

PoetryPoemRacismMurderPoliceAfrican AmericansBlacksPolice BrutalityRace RelationsPolicing
Book:Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart
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“It was wrong. It was wrong to pay the same dime yet have to walk to the back of the bus. It was wrong to have to pass a "white" school to go to a "colored" school. It was wrong to have Colored and White signs. It was wrong that Emmett Till was murdered. It was wrong that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was dynamited. It was wrong that Medgar Evers was shot in the back and bled to death in his own driveway. And whatever was not right could be, if not corrected, then certainly reproved by people with kinder hearts, better minds and the courage to speak out for their beliefs.”

PoetryRacePoemRacismPrejudiceAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesJim Crow
Book:Acolytes
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“this country might have been a pio neer land once. but. there ain’t no mo indians blowing custer’s mind with a different image of america. this country might have needed shoot/ outs/daily/ once. but. there ain’t no mo real/white/ allamerican bad/guys. just. u & me. blk/and un/armed. this country might have been a pion eer land. once. and it still is. check out the falling gun/shells on our blk/tomorrows.”

AmericaPoetryPoemRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksPolice BrutalityRace Relations
Author:Sonia Sanchez
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“Just us and the blues kneeling on a neck with the full weight of a man in blue. Eight minutes and forty-six seconds. In extremis, I can’t breathe gives way to asphyxiation, to giving up this world, and then mama, called to, a call to protest, fire, glass, say their names, say their names, white silence equals violence, the violence of again, a militarized police force teargassing, bullets ricochet, and civil unrest taking it, burning it down. Whatever contracts keep us social compel us now to disorder the disorder. Peace. We’re out to repair the future.”

PoetryChangePoemFutureRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksBlack Lives MatterPolice BrutalityProtests
Author:Claudia Rankine
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“[The Kerner R]eport does not say that Americans are racist. If it did, the only answer would be to line everybody up, all 200 million of us, then line up 200,000 psychiatrists, and have us all lie on couches for ten years trying to understand the problem and for ten years more learning how to deal with it. All over the country people are beating their breasts crying mea culpa--"I'm so sorry that I am a racist"--which means, really, that they want to cop out because if racism is to be solved on an individual psychological basis, then there is little hope. What the Kerner Report is really saying is that the institutions of America brutalize not only Negroes but also whites who are not racists but who in many communities have to use racist institutions. When it is put on that basis, we know we cannot solve the fundamental problem by sitting around examining our innards, but by getting out and fighting for institutional change.”

ChangeRacismInstitutionsCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksIndividualsAttitudesAntiracismInstitutional Change
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“From back of the houses, we hear some mother calling her son, the voice edgy on the last syllable, getting frantic. Probably Miz Baker, whose six-foot twelve-year-old got a way of scooting up and down that resembles too much the actions of a runaway bandit to the pigs around here. Mainly, he got the outlaw hue, and running too? Shit, Miz Baker stay frantic.”

RacismPrejudicePoliceMothersSuspicionAfrican AmericansBlacksPolice Brutality
Author:Toni Cade Bambara
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“Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable!”

SlaveryMothersAfrican AmericansBlacksSlavesSons
Book:Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
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“Black women who define ourselves and our goals beyond the sphere of a sexual relationship can bring to any endeavor the realized focus of completed and therefore empowered individuals. Black women and Black men who recognize that the development of their particular strengths and interests does not diminish the other do not need to diffuse their energies fighting for control over each other. We can focus our attentions against the real economic, political, and social forces at the heart of this society which are ripping us and our children and our worlds apart.”

SocietyFeminismGenderBlacksBlack Men
Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“The civil rights movement is evolving from a protest movement into a full-fledged social movement--an evolution calling its very name into question. It is now concerned not merely with removing the barriers to full opportunity but with achieving the fact of equality. From sit-ins and Freedom Rides we have gone into rent strikes, boycotts, community organization, and political action. As a consequence of this natural evolution, the Negro today finds himself stymied by obstacles of far greater magnitude than the legal barriers he was attacking before: automation, urban decay, de facto school segregation. These are problems which, while conditioned by Jim Crow, do not vanish upon its demise. They are more deeply rooted in our socioeconomic order; they are the result of the total society's failure to meet not only the Negro's needs but human needs generally.”

ChangeSocietyEqualityCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksSocial MovementsRacial Equality
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“Oona's mother resisted the notion that violence was happening, or that substantial violence was happening, and said that if there was violence it was because there were paid aggressors on the other side, saboteurs, and that they were trying to kill both our defenders and our people in general, and they were sometimes killing their own kind, to make us look bad, and also because some of their own kind supported us, and they killed them for that, and that the main point was separation, it was not that we were better than them, although we were better than them, how could you deny it, but that we needed our own places, where we could take care of our own, because our people were in trouble, so many of us in trouble, and the dark people could have their own places, and there they could do their own dark things, or whatever, and we would not stop them, but we would not participate in our own eradication, that had to end, and now there was no time to wait, now they were converting us, and lowering us, and that was a sign, a sign that if we did not act in this moment there would be no more moments left and we would be gone.”

ActionViolenceAggressionBlacksRace RelationsWhitesSabotagePeople Of Color
Book:The Last White Man
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“Sir, if you are as powerful as I feel that you are, and as inclined toward us as you seem to be, endeavor to do something for us, so that we might do something for ourselves. We are ready, sir; are angry, are capable, our hopes are coiled up so tight as to be deadly, or holy: turn us loose, sir, let us at it, let us show what we can do. --thomas havens”

ActionFreedomLibertyPowerCivil WarAfrican AmericansBlacksLincolnAbraham Lincoln
Book:Lincoln in the Bardo
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“Among the many vital jobs to be done, the nation must not only radically readjust its attitude toward the Negro in the compelling present, but must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past. It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on a just and equal basis? Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.”

RacismPrejudiceEqualityInequalityAfrican AmericansBlacksReparations
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“...even though I’m a product of Brown v. Board of Education, about 12 years ago I realized that I don’t think we could win Brown v. Board of Education today.... I don’t think our court would do anything that disruptive on behalf of disfavored people, on behalf of marginalized people. And that terrified me. But it also energized me to recognize that we were going to have to get outside the court and create a different consciousness. The question for me is, why wouldn’t we win? And it’s because we haven’t really reckoned with these larger issues of what it means to be a country dealing with our history of racial inequality.”

LawEqualityInequalityAfrican AmericanSupreme CourtBlacksSegregationCourtsBrown V Board Of EducationRace Relatios
Author:Bryan Stevenson
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