Quotes · Skopia

23 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

I, Too · 1926

★ 7.0

Poem

I swear to the Lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me.

Langston Hughes

The Black Man Speaks · 1943

★ 6.2

Speech

If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or being slaves.

Jupiter Hammon

1786

★ 6.1

Sociology

Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?

W.E.B. Du Bois

The Souls of Black Folk · 1903

★ 5.5

Speech · Political speech

The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.

Frederick Douglass

1853

★ 5.5

Novel

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

Invisible Man · 1952

★ 5.3

Comedy special · Comedy (stand up)

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

Killin' Them Softly · 2000

★ 5.3

Poem

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

1937

★ 5.1

Sociology · Political literature

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

The Other America · 1962

★ 5.1

Poem

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

Incident · 1925

★ 5.0

Film · Biography (film) · Drama (film) · Biography · Drama

We didn't land on Plymouth Rock—Plymouth Rock landed on us!

Malcolm X

Malcolm X · 1992

★ 4.8

Letter

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

1970

★ 4.3

Speech · Political speech

We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; the rock was landed on us.

Malcolm X

The Ballot or the Bullet · 1964

★ 4.0

Sociology

It 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

The Souls of Black Folk · 1903

★ 3.7

Novel

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

Native Son · 1940

★ 3.6

Speech

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

1964

★ 3.6

Autobiography and memoir

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.

1965

★ 3.6

Speech

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

The New York Times · 1965

★ 3.6

Essay

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

★ 3.5

Film · Biography (film) · Drama (film) · Biography · Drama

You are not an American, you are the victim of America!

Malcolm X

Malcolm X · 1992

★ 2.3

Essay

My 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

Notes of a Native Son · 1955

★ 2.1

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

1956

★ 1.8

Autobiography and memoir

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

1972

★ 1.8

Sourced and curated.