Best 199 quotes in «black history quotes» category

Let us not become the evil that we deplore.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

When I was six, God was a white man with a big beard riding on a white cloud. That's the image television pumps.

We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!

We intend to make this world the most beautiful, glorious planet that any human being can imagine and, really, beyond anything any human being can imagine.

What's shaking, chiefy baby?

When you have a large amount of the workforce being laid off, some of them have no other choice but to go out there and invent something.

When the Negro was completely an underdog, he needed white spokesmen. Liberals played their parts in this period exceedingly well.... But now that the Negro has rejected his role as an underdog, he has become more assertive in his search for identity and group solidarity; he wants to speak for himself.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

you must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

You really can change the world if you care enough.

You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

$1,200, That was the price of a man in those days. Now you can call him black, or you can call him a slave, but he was a man nonetheless.

You must change in order to survive.

...After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality. The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

All white people, I think, are implicated in these things so long as we participate in America in a normal way and attempt to go on leading normal lives while any one race is being cheated and tormented. But I now believe that we will probably go on leading our normal lives, and will go on participating in our nation in a normal way, unless there comes a time where Negroes can compel us by methods of extraordinary pressure to interrupt our pleasure.

A conquering force sustained the old folks and now centers us. Forming a collective of comeback saints, let us rally behind them and move forward. We’re called to a new awakening and application of what we’ve learned from those who’ve “looked over Jordan.

A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t 't necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm’s got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan.