“Only in the case of the Negro has the melting pot failed to bring a minority into the full stream of American life”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“It would be against all nature for all the Negroes to be either at the bottom, top, or in between. . . . We will go where the internal drive carries us like everybody else. It is up to the individual.”
Zora Neale Hurston
“The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.”
W. E. B. Du Bois
“Being a Negro writer these days is a racket and I'm going to make the most of it while it lasts. About twice a year I sell a story. It is acclaimed. I am a genius in the making. Thank God for this Negro literary renaissance. Long may it flourish!”
Wallace Henry Thurman
“Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.”
Sammy Davis Jr.
“One ever feels his twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
“No defender of slavery, I concede that it has its benevolent aspects in lifting the Negro from savagery and helping prepare him for that eventual freedom which is surely written in the Book of Fate”
Thomas Jefferson
