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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Malcolm X3 quotes
We didn't land on Plymouth Rock—Plymouth Rock landed on us! — Malcolm X · 1992We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; the rock was landed on us. — Malcolm X · 1964You are not an American, you are the victim of America! — Malcolm X · 1992James Baldwin2 quotes
It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6, or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you. — James Baldwin · 1965My life, my real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred I carried in my own heart. — James Baldwin · 1955Langston Hughes2 quotes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how
beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America. — Langston Hughes · 1926I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me. — Langston Hughes · 1943W.E.B. Du Bois2 quotes
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others... One feels his twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivngs; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903Chester Himes1 quote
My feelings are too intense. I hate bitterly, I love too exaltingly, I pity to extravagantly, I hurt too painfully. We American blacks call that "soul." — Chester Himes · 1972Countee Cullen1 quote
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember. — Countee Cullen · 1925Dave Chappelle1 quote
Every black dude in this room is a qualified paralegal and shit. He knows the law. If one of us even start to do something wrong, an old black man would pop out of nowhere. Nigga, don’t do that. That’s 5 to 10. — Dave Chappelle · 2000Frederick Douglass1 quote
The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed. — Frederick Douglass · 1853George Jackson1 quote
Being born a slave in a captive society and never experiencing any objective basis for expectation had the effect of preparing me for the progressively traumatic misfortunes that lead so many black men to the prison gate. I was prepared for prison. It required only minor psychic adjustments. — George Jackson · 1970Jupiter Hammon1 quote
If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or being slaves. — Jupiter Hammon · 1786Lewis Allan1 quote
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. — Lewis Allan · 1937Lorraine Hansberry1 quote
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 · 1964Michael Harrington1 quote
To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination... After the racist statues are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long. — Michael Harrington · 1962Paul Robeson1 quote
My father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I'm going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no Fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear? — Paul Robeson · 1956Ralph Ellison1 quote
I am an invisible man... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids-and I might even be said to posses a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. — Ralph Ellison · 1952Richard Wright1 quote
Goddammit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like living in jail. — Richard Wright · 1940Sammy Davis, Jr.1 quote
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. · 1965Zora Neale Hurston1 quote
I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes... I do not weep at the world-I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. — Zora Neale Hurston · 1928