History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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. I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women join the unqualified men in running our government. ~W.E.B. ~Toni Morrison, 1992 We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart. I will always remember my delight when Mrs. Georgia Gilmore - an unlettered woman of unusual intelligence - told how an operator demanded that she get off the bus after paying her fare and board it again by the back door, and then drove away before she could get there. ~William Lloyd Garrison When the Negro was completely an underdog, he needed white spokesmen. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. It is God's world. History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. In the past, apathy was a moral failure. All the negro asks is that the door which rewards industry, thrift, intelligence and character be left as wide open for him as for the foreigner who constantly comes to our country. There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion. As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say... as long as he looks to white folks for approval... then he ain't never gonna find out who he is and what he's about. More than this he has no right to request. ~Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992 ~Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotations: Black History. Black History Month originally began as Negro History Week in 1926. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ~William Hazlitt It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. ... – Dr. Mae Jemison, first African-American female astronaut.
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I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit. Black History Month quotes is an annual month-long celebration in the United States. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us. 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. ~Ida B. 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.
If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. Related Quotes Adversity History MLK Day Prejudice Racism. History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul. ~Martin Luther King, Jr. There was such a glory over everything. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. ~Martin Luther King, Jr. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures. ~Martin Luther King, Jr. Explore our collection of motivational and famous quotes by authors you know and love. Wells
~Martin Luther King, Jr. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience. And so today I still have a dream. [W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder.
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Less than this a republic has no right to withhold.
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When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. ~Martin Luther King, Jr. ~Martin Luther King, Jr. ~Abraham Joshua Heschel, c. 1963
~Booker T. Washington, 1904 February 12th, Armstrong Association meeting, New York City 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. I for one am not ashamed of this past.
The result, among other things, has been a flood of works on gender history, black history, and ethnic history of all kinds.
She turned to Judge Carter and said: "When they count the money, they do not know Negro money from white money." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm. Both European and American historians have done away with any conceptual limits on what in the past needs and deserves investigating. In this country American means white. We are made by history. ~Countess of Blessington Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization. American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen. ~Mary McLeod Bethune Our responsibility as citizens is to address the inequalities and injustices that linger, and we must secure our birthright freedoms for all people. February marks Black History Month, which is a time to commemorate and reflect on remarkable African American trailblazers who have left enduring legacies by igniting a desire for hope and change. History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. The History of Black History Month. ~August Wilson, .Jr. Here are twenty quotes from some of the most influential Black men and women. History is a relentless master. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is not a white man's world. Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Last saved 2020 Aug 30 Sun 19:27 PDT. When asked after several weeks of walking whether she was tired, she answered: "My feet is tired, but my soul is at rest."
The Negro is the child of two cultures - Africa and America. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
Even when the polls are open to all, Negroes have shown themselves too slow to exercise their voting privileges. You can not possibly have a broader basis for government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.