(23 quotes found)
“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
“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
“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.”
“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
“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
“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.
“What we called ourselves in 1944 - colored or Negro - we don't do anymore. Where we are now is not where we were then. It's very important for young people to understand that.”
Charles Fuller
“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
“If I do something good then I am American, but if I do something bad then I am a Negro!”
Tommie Smith
“The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force."”
Martin Luther King Jr.
