Negro Quotes

“Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories.”
― John Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams & His Wife Abigail Adams, During the Revolution

“In Harlem, Negro policemen are feared more than whites, for they have more to prove and fewer ways to prove it”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

“No, there is plenty wrong with Negroes. They have no society. They’re robots, automatons. No minds of their own. I hate to say that about us, but it’s the truth. They are a black body with a white brain.”
― Malcolm X

“If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison of modern civilization and die from the effects of it.”
― Marcus Garvey

“Eventually, some black thinkers believe, this "separation" may be the shortest route to an authentic communication at some future date when blacks and whites can enter into encounters in which they truly speak as equals and in which the white man will no longer load every phrase with unconscious suggestions that he has something to "concede" to black men or that he wants to help black men "overcome" their blackness.”
― John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me

“Negro eli neekeri on ihan eri asia kuin nigger eli nekru.”
― Tony Halme, Tuomiopäivä

“Algunos dicen que este mundo está gobernado por la eterna batalla entre el bien y el mal, negro y blanco. Pero yo digo que no. La guerra es entre el negro, el blanco y el gris.”
― L.A. Serröt, Gris

“He got off on Lincoln and slavery and dared any man there to deny that Lincoln and the negro and Moses and the children of Israel were the same, and that the Red Sea was just the blood that had to be spilled in order that the black race might cross into the Promised Land.”
― William Faulkner

“Sad business, being a Negro man, always underpaid, their eyes don’t look like our eyes, bloodshot, brown, liquid in them about to quiver out. Read somewhere some anthropologist thinks Negroes instead of being more primitive are the latest thing to evolve, the newest man.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Redux

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. (incorrectly attributed to Marcus Garvey)”
― Charles Seifert, The Negro's or Ethiopian's Contribution to Art

“Господь улыбается, как негритенок. («Генералы песчаных карьеров»)”
― Jorge Amado, Capitães da Areia

“How much living have you done?
From it the patterns that you weave
Are imaged:
Your own life is your totem pole,
Your yard of cloth,
Your living.

How much loving have you done?
How full and free your giving?
For living is but loving
And loving only giving.”
― Georgia Douglas Johnson

“I remember the first time I ever saw you, the day you came. L.J. and I were so excited about this new person that came into the family like a storm blowing over the Bradshaw’s. We’d never seen a Negro before.”
― A.G. Graham, Yavapai County Line: West of the Divide Book 1

“He so often felt as though he hailed from a different species, not quite human. He’d always been different, had never fit. Negroes looked at him askance, questioning his credentials as a Negro man. Whites did, too. For both groups, he wasn’t Negro enough.”
― Joe Okonkwo, Jazz Moon

“El mundo se inclinó con violencia y se volvió negro”
― Marissa Meyer, Heartless

“... laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed;
And, close as sin and suffering joined,
We march to Fate abreast.”
― John Greenleaf Whittier

“(p.112-114) This past, the Negro's past, of rope, fire torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for this women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible - this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering - enough is certainly as good as a feast - but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth - and indeed, no church - can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one's bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry. The apprehension of life here so briefly and inadequately sketched has been the experience of generations of Negroes, and it helps to explain how they have endured and how they have been able to produce children of kindergarten age who can walk through mobs to get to school. It demands great force and great cunning continually to assault the mighty and indifferent fortress of white supremacy, as Negroes in this country have done so long. It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate. The Negro boys and girls who are facing mobs today come out of a long line of improbable aristocrats - the only genuine aristocrats this country has produced. I say "this country" because their frame of reference was totally American. They were hewing out of the mountain of white supremacy the stone of their individuality. I have great respect for that unsung army of black men and women who trudged down back lanes and entered back doors, saying "Yes, sir" and "No, Ma'am" in order to acquire a new roof for the schoolhouse, new books, a new chemistry lab, more beds for the dormitories, more dormitories. They did not like saying "Yes, sir" and "No Ma'am", but the country was in no hurry to educate Negroes, these black men and women knew that the job had to be done, and they put their pride in their pockets in order to do it. It is very hard to believe that they were in anyway inferior to the white men and women who opened those back doors. It is very hard to believe that those men and women, raising their children, eating their greens, crying their curses, weeping their tears, singing their songs, making their love, as the sun rose, as the sun set, were in any way inferior to the white men and women who crept over to share these splendors after the sun went down. ... I am proud of these people not because of their color but because of their intelligence and their spiritual force and their beauty. The country should be proud of them, too, but, alas, not many people in this country even know of their existence.”
― James Baldwin

“the deficiency of the negro race is not as a result of the deluge number of bad leaders;rather, its is an outcome of the shortage of young negro intellect ready to lead a revolutionary africa.”
― victor adeagbo

“Cualquier dejo de verdad que hubiera comenzado a florecer en el corazón de la joven, pronto comenzó a marchitarse”
― Isha Judd, El diamante negro de Atlantis / The Black Diamond of Atlantis

“He means what kind of special negro are you?”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“Question: Is there anything in the Bible that reveals the origin of the Negro?

Answer: It is generally believed that the curse which Noah pronounced upon Canaan was the origin of the Black race. Certain it is that when Noah said, "Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren," he pictured the future of the Colored race. They have been and are a race of servants, but now in the dawn of the twentieth century, we are all coming to see this matter of service in its true light and find that the only real joy in life is in serving others; not bossing them. There is no servant in the world as good as a good Colored servant, and they joy that he gets from rendering faithful service is one of the purest joys there is in the world.”
― Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, The Golden Age

“African became famous outside Africa. Evolution of the rest black people still under the evaluation process!”
― Jahanshah Safari

“Come close, be my buddy, then after a while call me nigga - it won't affect our friendship one bit. But out of the blue if you walk up to me as a complete stranger and call me that, then you only deepen the wounds caused by white oppressors throughout human history.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Şehit Sevda Society: Even in Death I Shall Live

“In 1950 there would be 31,707 male lawers in New York State. There would be 1,275 female lawyers in New York State. There would be 19 Negro women lawyers in New York State. Put otherwise, black women constituted about 6 10,000ths (0.06%) of all the state's layers. A proportion so small that it is less a minority than a rounding error.”
― stephen L. carter, Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster