Best 199 quotes in «black history quotes» category

I came back to Louisville after the Olympics with my shiny gold medal. Went into a luncheonette where black folks couldn't eat. Thought I'd put them on the spot. I sat down and asked for a meal. The Olympic champion wearing his gold medal. They said, "We don't serve niggers here." I said, "That's okay, I don't eat 'em." But they put me out in the street. So I went down to the river, the Ohio River, and threw my gold medal in it.

Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.

Go to work! Go to work in the morn of a new creation... until you have... reached the height of self-progress, and from that pinnacle bestow upon the world a civilization of your own.

I don't believe in fear - I live my life without regrets.

I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. It gets in the way of Black History Month. Cupid didn't free any slaves.

I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.

If the only time you think of me as a scientist is during Black History Month, then I must not be doing my job as a scientist.

I did a book in 1996, an overview of black history. In that process I became more aware of a lot of the black inventors of the 19th century.

I feel that the most important requirement in success is learning to overcome failure. You must learn to tolerate it, but never accept it

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.

If you want to get an idea across, wrap it up in a person.

I have a dream, and a plan, to combine the commercial possibilities of Valentine's Day with the substance and meaning of black history month. I call it: Blackentine's Day.

In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment; it only increased my desire to be free, and set me thinking of plans to gain my freedom.

If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander.

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes.

Just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice.

Let us not become the evil that we deplore.

Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings. ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind.

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

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.

Many of us in Nashville accepted nonviolence as a way of life, a way of living, not simply as a technique or a tactic.

No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin.

Never, never rest contented with any circle of ideas, but always be certain that a wider one is still possible.

One of the things I recognized early on, doing whatever studies of black history I have, is that even though black folks were transported as slaves, into servitude, when they were carried out of Africa they left empty-handed, but they didn't leave empty-headed. They carried with them the culture they knew, the culture they had, and that culture reconstituted itself in all the places they went.

No library of American business achievement is complete without the story of Arthur G. Gaston. . . . Black Titan is a long overdue contribution to the recording of not just black history, but American history.

Prejudice doesn't make me mad. It just - I guess 'pisses me off' is the word.

Phillip Roth uses his Black women characters to make anti intellectual remarks about Black history month, begun by a man who reached intellectual heights that Roth will never attain. Roth is a petty bigot and his ignorant remarks about black culture expose him as a buffoon to scholars the world over.

Slowly we have lifeted ourselves by our own bootstraps. Step by halting step, we have beat our way back

Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.

No time to marry, no time to settle down; I'm a young woman, and I ain't done runnin' around.

The great thing about serving the poor is that there is no competition.

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

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

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.

The Republican Party's history is rich and chock full of emancipation and black history.

The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.

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.

They oughtta change Black History Month to Black Progress Month and start measuring it.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

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.

The world is a severe schoolmaster, for its frowns are less dangerous than its smiles and flatteries, and it is a difficult task to keep in the path of wisdom.

Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.

We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much.

We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.