Quotes

I woke up this morning needing some inspiration, so I decided to look up some quotes made by African Americans throughout history.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. ~Frederick Douglas

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 warrings ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. ~WEB Dubois

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

"We, the people." It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document [the Preamble to the US Constitution] 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 C. Jordan

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~Dr. 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

Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain't restful. Avoid running at all times. Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you. ~Satchel Paige

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. Is that clear? ~Paul Robeson

That . . . man . . . says women can't have as much rights as man, cause Christ wasn't a woman. Where did your Christ come from? . . . From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him. ~Sojourner Truth

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

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 Douglas

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better. ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them. ~Maya Angelou

There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people. ~Fannie Lou Hamer

Prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating. ~Marian Anderson

You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way. ~Lena Horne

When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression. ~Jesse Jackson

Bigotry's birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings. ~Bayard Rustin

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less. ~Eldridge Cleaver

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged. ~Alice Walker

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death. ~Angela Davis

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. ~Audre Lorde

We've got to show that blacks and whites are treated equally in the army. Otherwise, what's the point of waging war on Hitler? ~Josephine Baker

Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job , or a slum mother battling to give her kids a chance for a better life. But white is beautiful, too, when it helps change society to make our system work for black people also. White is ugly when it oppresses blacks -- and so is black ugly when black people exploit other blacks. No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin. ~Whitney Young, Jr

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: Founder of Negro History Week, which has developed into what is now known as Black History Month