[W]hen you first name becomes ...

[W]hen you first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are), and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro... when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" - then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

[W]e are the heirs of a past o...

[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder.  I for one am not ashamed of this past.  My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

You have seen how a man was ma...

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

~Frederick Douglass~

You can not possibly have a br...

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.

~William Lloyd Garrison~

You can be up to your boobies ...

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

~Billie Holiday~

Wherever there is a human bein...

Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.

~William Lloyd Garrison~

Whenever I hear anyone arguing...

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

~Abraham Lincoln~

When the Negro was completely ...

When the Negro was completely an underdog, he needed white spokesmen.  Liberals played their parts in this period exceedingly well.... 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.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

When I found I had crossed tha...

When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.  There was such a glory over everything.

~Harriet Tubman, on her first escape from slavery, 1845~

We should emphasize not Negro ...

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, 1926~

We do not deride the fears of ...

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America.  A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.

~June Jordan~

We did not hesitate to call ou...

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army.  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.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

We black men seem the sole oas...

We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.

~W.E.B. DuBois~

We are the wrong people of the...

We are the wrong people of the wrong skin in the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about?

~June Jordan~

Today we know with certainty t...

Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead.  The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

To live anywhere in the world ...

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

~William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches and Public Letters~

To be a poor man is hard, but ...

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

~W.E.B. DuBois~

This being Black History Month...

This being Black History Month, I would like to ask people to celebrate the similarities and not focus on the differences between people of color and not of color.

~Lynn Swann~

There is such a thing as the f...

There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion.  Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up.... 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.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

There is no Negro problem.&#16...

There is no Negro problem.  The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution.

~Frederick Douglass~