Bringing
the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya
Angelou(1928-)
" Still I rise," And Still I Rise (1978)
|
People pay
for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves
to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Nobody Knows My Name(1961)
|
| The workings of the human
heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe. One moment they
make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection
of the divine image.
Charles W.
Chesnutt (1858-1932)
The Marrow of Tradition (1901)
|
You're either part of
the solution or part of the problem.
(Leroy) Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998)
speech given in San Francisco in 1968
|
| You have seen how a man
was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
Frederick Douglass (1818?-1895)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas (1845)
|
It is a peculiar sensation,
this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's
self through the eyes of others. . . . One ever feels his twoness,—an
American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings;
two warrings ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone
keeps it from being torn asunder.
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)
The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
|
What happens to a dream
deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
" Harlem" (1951)
|
I am not tragically colored.
There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind
my eyes. . . . Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life,
I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little
pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I
am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
Zora Neale Hurston (1901?-1960)
" How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (1928)
|
| Our nation is a rainbow—red,
yellow, brown, black, and white—and we're all precious in
God's sight.
Jesse Jackson (1941)
speech given at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco on
July 17, 1984
|
When I read great literature,
great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has
not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings
and thoughts through language.
James Earl Jones (1931-)
Voices and Silences (1993)
|
| The battles that count
aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the
invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that's where
it's at.
Jesse Owens(1913-1980)
Blackthink (1970)
|
Success is to be measured
not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by
the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
Up From Slavery (1901)
|
| The world is a severe
schoolmaster, for its frowns are less dangerous than its smiles
and flatteries, and it is a difficult task to keep in the path
of wisdom.
Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784)
letter to John Thornton, October 30, 1774
|
We should emphasize not
Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a
history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world
void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.
Carter Woodson (1875-1950)
on founding Negro History Week, 1926
|
| My hope for
my children must be that they respond to the still, small voice
of God in their own hearts.
Andrew Young(1932-)
A Way Out of No Way (1994)
|
