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Black experience23 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 · 1943If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or being slaves. — Jupiter Hammon · 1786Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed. — Frederick Douglass · 1853I 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 · 1952All 23 quotes →Effects of racism3 quotes
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 · 1962Now 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 · 1925My 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 · 1955Race relations2 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 · 1926Goddammit, 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 · 1940Racism2 quotes
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 · 1925Being 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. · 1965America1 quote
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 · 1926Black people and police1 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 · 2000Criminal law1 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 · 2000Jim Crow1 quote
I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me. — Langston Hughes · 1943Lynching1 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 · 1937