However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: for the black man there is only one destiny.... And it is white.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what h...e is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambus...hed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When in the enfranchisement of the black men [women] saw another ignorant class of voters placed about their heads, and beheld the... danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; and demanded for the protection of themselves and children, that woman's voice should be heard and her opinions in public affairs be expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that the black man had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and bled and died for his country. It was not because the three-penny tax on tea was so exorbitant that our Revolutionary fathers fought and died, but to establish the principle that such taxation was unjust. It is the same with this woman's revolution; though every law were as just to woman as to man, the principle that one class may usurp the power to legislate for another is unjust, and all who are now in the struggle from love of principle would still work on until the establishment of the grand and immutable truth, "All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or jus...t felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve, ...and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and American humanity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do... something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which ha...ve so long been his in law?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget... it--whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »