Best slavery & stories Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.”

“Maybe it's the remnants of my religious upbringing, but I do try and insert a sense of social justice into the work. For instance, to me, Mansfield Park is a story about servitude and slavery. Other people may have a problem with that, but that's how I read the book and so that's how I shot the movie.”

People Trying May Book Stories Problem Social Religious Justice Shots Social Justice Slavery Instance Parks Upbringing Servitude Remnants Insert Mansfield Park

Author:Patricia Rozema

“All societies have these cases. There are many, many crime cases that remain famous from the times of the Romans. The Bible is full of crime stories. You can almost flip to a page. Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers is a crime story. The Bible is full of crime stories.”

Stories Cases Crime Brother Pages Slavery Flip

Author:Bill James

“The true story is that black people need to tell their history. Very few films are made by black people about slavery. That itself is a crime because slavery is a very important historical event that has held our people hostage. Forget white people's role in it. In the end what's important is black people remain and live with the scars and psychological issues.”

“I would've written this story [Django] if [Barack] Obama were president or if he never existed. For one, I think it's time to tell a story that deals with this subject America has avoided for so long. Most countries have been forced to deal with the atrocities of their past that still affect them to this day. But America has been pretty slippery in the way that it has avoided looking slavery in the eye. I believe that's a problem.”

“Frankly, Django is an American story that needs to be told, when you think of slavery existing in this country for 245 years. In slave narratives there were all types of tales and drama and heroism and pain and love that happened during that time. That's rich material for drama! Everyone complains that there are no new stories left to tell. Not true, there are a whole bunch of them, and they're all American with a capital A.”

Thinking Needs Years Country Whole Stories Pain Left Rich Happened Materials Type Drama And Love Slavery Slave Complaining Bunch Tales Narrative Heroism Love And Pain Django

Author:Quentin Tarantino

“I didn't have a knee-jerk reaction like some people did to the language and the violence. My stepfather was a history teacher at Lincoln High School in Dallas. So, I was already familiar with the N-word and the brutality of slavery. What I was drawn to was the love story between Django and Broomhilda and how he defends and gets the girl in the end. I thought it was just an amazing and courageous project.”

“As black people, we want our story to be this constant ascendance from slavery. But it's not like that. You push and it goes up. Then there's a backlash, and if folks stop pushing, it goes down. Let's face it, it's a lot more complicated.”

People Ifs Want Stories Faces Black Slavery Constant Folks Complicated Pushing Black People Backlash Pushing It

Author:Stanley Nelson Jr.

“In the beginning this was just an idea. Then it was a short story. Then it was a script. Each step was pretty exciting to see people come on board to support the project. It's gratifying to know that more people are seeing my work in this form than my work as a playwright. And it's been fun to hear people's response to seeing it. I've been having some deep conversations with strangers and friends about how much it has made them think about slavery and its impact today.”

“For me, seeing our history told in this light, the ones who did rebel, the ones who did revolt, the revolutionaries, excited me. Seeing this story of the Underground Railroad ... and that is such a proud part of our history that not a lot of us know about, where these brave men and women, they were heroes, really helped tear down the system of slavery just by running.”

Knows Men Stories Light Running Seeing Tears Proud Hero Men And Women Slavery Brave Excited Revolutionary Rebel Revolt Railroads Brave Man Underground Railroad

Author:Jurnee Smollett

“But really, for me, I tried to find first-person accounts. I tried to read stories from men and women who had survived slavery because it's different when you hear it from their mouths instead of reading it from a history book.”

Men Firsts Persons Book Different Stories Reading Mouths Men And Women Accounts Slavery Survived First Person History Books

Author:Jurnee Smollett

“If you read the story of slavery and see the part that the Uncle Tom played in the plantation, and then you see how the white man today has changed his tactics, but he still occupies the same position, in that same context you find Uncle Tom. He has changed his tactics but he still occupies the same position.”

Ifs Men Stills Stories Today White Position Changed Slavery Toms Uncles White Man Tactics Plantations Uncle Tom

Author:Malcolm X

“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

Men Trying Humans Long War God Stories Religion Christianity Class Poverty Terrible Ambition Slavery Mere Empires Hopeless Human History Prostitution

Book:A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis

Source: A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis

“I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked. It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery. So I wrote this book for my friend, with whom I have lived and will die free.”

“In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.”

Book Stories Black Rights Slavery Civil Rights Typical History Books

Author:Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

“For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.”

Source: The Prose Works of John Milton: With a Biographical Introduction

“In our government-controlled schools we are taught that Lincoln was our greatest president because his war ended slavery and saved the Union. As usual, the other side of the story - the side that reflects poorly on the government - somehow gets lost.”

War Stories Government School Lost Sides President Liberty Taught Slavery Unions Libertarian Saved Controlled Usual Libertarianism Great Libertarian

Author:Richard J. Maybury

“I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican.”

Stories Law Republican Slavery Slave Abraham Funny Story

Author:Marion Barry

“Lawrence Hill, a cultural and spiritual descendant of West African griots, has used his vast storytelling talents to create an epic story that spans three continents. The Book of Negroes recites the pain, misery and liberation of one African woman, Aminata Diallo, who was stolen from her homeland and sold into American slavery. Through Aminata, Hill narrates the terrifying story of slavery and puts at the centre a female experience of the African Diaspora. I wept upon reading this story. The Book of Negroes is courageous, breathtaking, simply brilliant.”

“Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'”

Knows Writing May Important Stories Able Ability Tomorrow Protect Slavery Life Changing

Author:Maya Angelou

“The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out.”

Book Whole Stories Comfort Slavery Medical Experiments Coming Out Units

Author:Iris Chang

“But we hav always resisted slavery. Our constant resistance was central to bringing about slavery's end. I came here not only to recover then history of this resistance, but also to specifically find the women whose stories had been written out of slave revolts. After reading every scrap of every story about slave revolts, I came across ones that included women, but only if I read between the lines.”

Stories Women Slavery Resistance Unwritten

Book:Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

Source: Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“So much of the story we tell about history is really the story that we tell about ourselves, about our mothers and our fathers and their mothers and their fathers, as far back as our lineages will take us. Throughout our lives we are told certain stories and they are stories that we choose to believe--stories that become embedded in our identities in ways we are not always fully cognizant of. For many of the people I met at Blandford, the story of the Confederacy is the story of their home, of their family--and the story of their family is the story of them. So when they are asked to reckon with the fact that their ancestors fought a war to keep my ancestors enslaved, there is resistance to facts that have been documented by primary sources and contemporaneous evidence. They are forced to confront the lies they have upheld. They are forced to confront the flaws of their ancestors. As Greg Stewart, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, told the New York Times in the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston massacre, "You're asking me to agree that my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were monsters." Accepting such a reality would, for them, mean the deterioration of a narrative that has long been a part of their lineage, and the disintegration of so much of who they believed themselves to be in the world. But as I think of Blandford, I'm left wondering if we are all just patchworks of the stories we've been told. What would it take--what does it take--for you to confront a false history even if it means shattering the stories you have been told throughout your life? Even if it means having to fundamentally reexamine who you are and who your family has been? Just because something is difficult to accept doesn't mean you should refuse to accept it. Just because someone tells you a story doesn't make that story true.”

Stories Truth History Racism Lies Slavery Families Narratives Confederacy Family Stories

Book:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Source: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

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Slavery Quotes