Black History famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
-
If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.
-- Alice Walker -
In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.
-- Andrew Young -
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
-- Audre Lorde -
No time to marry, no time to settle down; I'm a young woman, and I ain't done runnin' around.
-- Bessie Smith -
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.
-- Billie Holiday -
You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.
-- Booker T. Washington -
The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
-- Chinua Achebe -
Black History Month is in the shortest month of the year, and the coldest-just in case we want to have a parade
-- Chris Rock -
Prejudice doesn't make me mad. It just - I guess 'pisses me off' is the word.
-- Chuck Berry -
Black History Month is a great celebration for Black people everywhere. I just hope we get to the point as Black people that we celebrate everyday like it is Black History month by living our lives and aspiring to be all we can. Many people lost their lives for us to have the privileges we have so we need to honor them by striving to be the best we can be.
-- Crystal Robinson -
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.
-- Daymond John -
… the truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element…
-- Derek Walcott -
America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don't misuse a household pet.
-- Dick Gregory -
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.
-- Earl G. Graves, Sr. -
It is my hope that as we commemorate Black History Month in the future, we will continue to celebrate the many achievements and rich culture of African-Americans.
-- Eliot Engel -
I could depend a lot on my shaking, though I never shimmied vulgarly and only to express myself.
-- Ethel Waters -
The great thing about serving the poor is that there is no competition.
-- Eugene Rivers -
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
-- Frederick Douglass -
The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.
-- Henry Louis Gates -
I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.
-- Ida B. Wells -
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
-- James Weldon Johnson -
We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.
-- Jesse Jackson -
Our goal was not freedom. Freedom was the necessary prerequisite to get to equality.
-- Jesse Jackson -
The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.
-- Jesse Jackson -
I believe in nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living.
-- John Lewis -
An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
-- Langston Hughes -
I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.
-- Langston Hughes -
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.
-- Marcus Garvey -
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.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
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.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
[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.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
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.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
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.
-- Maya Angelou -
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.
-- Mo Rocca -
I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.
-- Morgan Freeman -
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 ***** 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.
-- Muhammad Ali -
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.
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson -
You face the biggest challenge of all: to have the courage to seek your big dream regardless of what anyone says. You are the only person alive who can see your big picture and even you can't see it all.
-- Oprah Winfrey -
I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes.
-- Oprah Winfrey -
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.
-- Phillis Wheatley -
I don't believe in fear - I live my life without regrets.
-- Puff Daddy -
Bring on your tear gas, bring on your grenades, your new supplies of Mace, your state troopers and even your national guards. But let the record show we ain't going to be turned around.
-- Ralph Abernathy -
If you want to get an idea across, wrap it up in a person.
-- Ralph Bunche -
There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
-- Rita Dove -
All business is personal...Make your friends before you need them.
-- Robert Johnson -
We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much.
-- Sojourner Truth -
Black History Month should be celebrated everyday. It's a month that's kind of sad to me, because I am reminded of the struggles that people before us had to go through for us to be able to live comfortably today.
-- Tamara James -
But George Lucas is carrying about Black actors, about Black men, about Black history, which really incorporates and tells all of history. You can't take one race out without eliminating every other race if you're going to tell the story of the human race.
-- Terrence Howard -
No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin.
-- Whitney M. Young -
We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.
-- Yvette Clarke -
I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. It gets in the way of Black History Month. Cupid didn't free any slaves.
-- Damien Lemon -
you must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.
-- Rosa Parks -
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.
-- Kerry James Marshall
