No more fear, no more cringing, no more begging and pleading. Marcus Garvey
The thing to do is to get organized; keep separated and you will be exploited, you will be robbed, you will be killed. Get organized and you will compel the world to respect you. Marcus Garvey
We – as individuals – have been concerned with the place of the black man in American Society and his struggle for equal rights. As members of the United States Olympic team, each of us has come to feel a moral commitment to support our black teammates in their efforts to dramatize the injustices and inequalities which permeate our society. US Olympic crew team
I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have. William Shakespeare, Othello III iii 263
What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys,
Ye white-limed walls, ye alehouse painted signs,
Coal-black is better than another hue
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white
Although she lave them hourly in the flood. William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus IV ii 95-102, Aaron with drawn sword over baby
The day will come – and it is not far off – when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs. George H W Bush
Manhattan: I was on my way to Harlem. My mission: to spend time with New York’s Black Power groups, from the moderate to the extreme. I wanted to find out to what extent they would accept me – a white man – into their lives. And I’d arrived at a sensitive time. Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends s2e3: Black Nationalism, BBC 2001
The whole idea of integration in America is a myth. ibid.
Once Richard Nixon was elected president and was inaugurated in January 1969, we were targeted, bam, bam, bam, by a very sophisticated, advanced, counterintelligence program, at the same time, by very crude and violent police. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Black Panther Party
Young, gifted and black. Weldon J Irvine & Nina Simone, 1969 song
Though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic – to be young, gifted and black. Lorraine Hansberry, 1930-65, American dramatist
Those who profess to favuor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
Black is beautiful. John Sweat Rock, mid-60s slogan
Power to the people & All Power to the People. Mid-60s slogan & Black Panther movement slogan
Though I have found no Negroes who want to see the United Nations lose this war, I have found many who before the war ends want to see the stuffing knocked out of white supremacy. American Negroes are confronted not with a choice but with a challenge both to win democracy for ourselves at home and to help win the war for democracy the world over. A Philip Randolf
39,236. If Negro Men Can Carry Gun For Uncle Sam Surely They Can Drive Milk Wagons For Bowman Dairy. Protest banner
So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior. Steve Biko, Boston Globe 25th October 1977
Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression – the blackness of their skin – and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude. Steve Biko, I Write What I Like, 1978
Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being. ibid.
Being black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude. ibid.
It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth. ibid.
The blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. They want to do things for themselves and all by themselves. Steve Biko, letter to SRC Presidents, I Write What I Like, 1978
We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-Cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds. ibid.
Black man, you are on your own. Steve Biko, slogan coined for South African Students Organisation
The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity. Steve Biko, evidence given at the SASO/BPC trial 3rd May 1976
If the colour bar is not broken down now it will break down the Empire. We’re proud of our heritage and do not want to be subjected to any experience which will rob us of that pride or which will cast a slur there on. Dr Harold Moody, League of Coloured Peoples
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie’s big band – all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature. Ernest J Gaines
There is a great stir about coloured men getting their rights, but not a word about the coloured women; and if coloured men get their rights, and not coloured women theirs, you see the coloured men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again. Sojourner Truth, speech to Equal Rights Convention 1867
He [Carmichael] repeated the line from the song he liked so well, ‘Something is happening here, but you don’t know quite what it is, do you, Mr Jones?’ What he [Carmichael] was getting at was that the Jews were simply one strata of society who are themselves being oppressed by people who are much richer and much more powerful. In the agencies of this power he cited banks, the chief among which were Morgan Guarantee Trust and Chase Manhattan. And the Foundations connected with these monoliths. It was not long after this that Stokely Carmichael mysteriously was ousted from both SNICK and the Black Panthers. Apparently, he had learned too much. G Edward Griffin, The Capitalist Conspiracy
The white race is absolutely disagreeable to get along with in peace. Dr Khalid Abdul Muhammad, Black Panthers
It was just a reform era. And here’s a black man and is the strongest man in the world. He represents boxing ... The premier athlete. And who is it? A black man. Jack Johnson had unwilled a tremendous hatred. And he didn’t care. He really didn’t. Bert Randolph Sugar, interview Ringside: Top 10 Heavyweights
1910 v James Jeffries (7/10 betting), Reno Nevada: All bets were off. And yet it was an ugly scene reflecting the attitude of the day. The social attitude ... It was a totally white crowd ... He out-pointed him. He out-slugged him ... It had ramifications. There were riots in cities with whites killing blacks. Nineteen dead. ibid.
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln marked the beginning of a disastrous political process that led Americans to reject the appeals for racial equality that had emerged from the radicalism of the Civil War. During the century between emancipation in the 1860s and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s African Americans were pushed into segregated lives, defined by the so-called Jim Crow laws. And lynching. Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner? BBC 2011
I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept. Song of Solomon 1:5-6
For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me. Jeremiah 8:21