African American Quotes

This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority-African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. ~ Ray Nagin

If we do with Latinos what we did with African-Americans, Republicans and conservatives will be doomed. ~ Karl Rove

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American. ~ Aberjhani

This power, this black power, originates in a view of the American galaxy taken from a dark and essential planet. Black power is the dungeon-side view of Monticello - which is to say, the view taken in struggle. And black power births a kind of understanding that illuminates all the galaxies in their truest colors. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm a Midwesterner, and everyone in Ohio is excited. I'm also a New Yorker, and a New Jerseyan, and an American, plus I'm an African-American, and a woman. I know it seems like I'm spreading like algae when I put it this way, but I'd like to think of the prize being distributed to these regions and nations and races. ~ Toni Morrison

They say African Americans. I say black people. I've only been to Africa once. I've been in America all my life! ~ Herman Cain

We are the in midst of a bipartisan moment as it relates to criminal justice reform and dealing with mass incarceration in America which disproportionately impacts the African-American community. ~ Hakeem Jeffries

When you look at the Justice Department's report talking about the Ferguson Police Department's rampant pattern of discrimination and its excessive use of force against African-American citizens, it's hard to try to rationalize how this cesspool of racism doesn't spill over onto the individual officers. ~ Benjamin Crump

The men her girlfriends dated were too often angry and muttering about oppression. One of the reasons she took to Skeet later in life was that he never went to that place; he believed with a firm positivity that he didn't need to waste time resenting real or imagined social constructs because he would always be ahead of them. The individual, not the people, was responsible for success or failure. ~ Jeff Hobbs

The world judges you by your color, the universe judges you by your deeds. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I started to study the flute in 1951. The flute has been utilized by African-American musicians as far back as the early Twenties. If you take a look at some of the old pictures of Chick Webb, then you will see the flute right there on the bandstand among the woodwinds. ~ Yusef Lateef

Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly,burrowing always at the very root of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away. ~ Charles W. Chesnutt

What y'all ladies got to share? Hmmm, what you bitches got?"

Aunt Georgia sighed and squinted at the boy. She said, "The Lord loves a cheerful giver, but I'm just not in the mood."

The thug moved his hand from his crotch to his scalp, still scratching. "What in the hell's that supposed to mean?" Mrs. Cleveland raised and pumped her walking stick, which, it turned out, was a double-barreled shotgun.

"It means take one more step," she said, "and I'll blast you to hell, you ignorant-ass bastard. ~ Jabari Asim

I actually spoke in an African-American church yesterday. ~ Howard Dean

These same people who accuse Planned Parenthood of 'targeting' African-American children, they care about you only while you're in the womb. The minute you crown, you're on your own. ~ Gwen Moore

You leave your neighborhood but you never want to forget where you came from," he says. "I have the best of best worlds. I'm street smart and book smart. You put that together in an African-American male and that's dangerous. ~ Anonymous

I think at places like 'Slate' or the magazine where I work, there was a really poor record of hiring African-American writers. It was really that simple. And I think with the proliferation of the Internet and Internet media, it has been a little harder to maintain that gatekeeper position. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

My ultimate authority would be the school librarian Mrs. Greenbacher. ~ Shawn Stewart Ruff

In the African American community, we are very 'hush, hush' about things in our life. ~ Kym Whitley

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong. ~ Muhammad Ali

The African American community is so under-served in the entertainment industry. ~ Lance Reddick

Usually, I'll be auditioning for the third lead, and there will be Latina actresses, Indian actresses, African American actresses because it will be like, 'Let's check off this box. We have our lead white girl, and we need an ethnic slot.' ~ Constance Wu

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience, ~ Henry Louis Gates

Dear Black Girls and Black Women… WE matter. Our presence matters, our voices matter, and our votes matter. Make no mistake about it… WE ARE POWERFUL. We disrupt the norm and change the system for the betterment of ALL people. ~ Stephanie Lahart

There are no clean victories for black people, nor, perhaps, for any people. The presidency of Barack Obama is no different. One can now say that an African American individual can rise to the same level as a white individual, and yet also say that the number of black individuals who actually qualify for that status will be small. One thinks of Serena Williams, whose dominance and stunning achievements can't, in and of themselves, ensure equal access to tennis facilities for young black girls. The gate is open and yet so very far away. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, "Did you see what that Negro did?" A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol. ~ Henry Louis Gates

I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films. ~ Wes Craven

He was a romantic, a poet, a lover, a friend, and a freak. Someone to be turned on by and disgusted with in the same breath. He filled her with emotion. Whether it was the sensation of an orgasm or the comfort of someone who listen to her, this experience indulged all her pleasurable senses with little to no conflict. It was heaven, it was ecstasy, but it wasn't real. ~ Norian F. Love

We know that African American students tend to be relational learners. It's about the relationships between a teacher and student. Students respond well to teachers they know, believe in them, care about them, but also who teach in a matter that elicits a more active approach to learning, rather than just sitting and listening. The research on this is strong and has been available for a long time, but it is not widely practiced. That's a huge obstacle. ~ Pedro Noguera

I am an American, proud to be an American, proud to be a black American. I'm not African-American. I've never been to Africa. I'm an American that is black and my　– and I'm proud to be a black that submits to my Christianity. I am proud to be just a man. I mean a man's man, not a metro sexual, not one that gets his nails done. I mean a man that used to get out there and knock heads and get his fingernails dirty. I'm proud of being a man, but my manhood submits to my Christianity, but I don't see that in Al Sharpton. Any time anything happens that attacks his blackness, he fears it and　– because he has nothing else to stand on. Thus, when the real civil rights movement of everyone steps up, when we're saying the Tea Party, don't take being discriminated against. If a black person was kicked out of a hotel for being black down in Florida, it would be an uproar, but since the Tea Party was kicked out because of their political views, that's going against America. That's why we're here going against the Constitution, with certain unalienable rights. That is the true fight we must start and we must fight today like never before. ~ Ken Hutcherson

My teeth ache, my gums hurt, and my cat is tearing me apart, wanting you in every way imaginable. Your body. Your magic. Your fire spirit. Your blood. ~ N.D. Jones

America was magnificently characterized in November of 2008 when we elected, for the first time, an African-American President of the United States. ~ David Scott

In 2012 President Obama didn't go anywhere near African-American communities. Why? Because unemployment was so high there, he didn't want to address it. ~ Rudy Giuliani

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Was she happy? She thought – yes, reasonably so. Then again, what was happiness but the vast terrain between ecstasy and agony? Was this too small an ambition? ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Only Fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Proverbs 1:7 NLT ~ Eddie Johnson

I won't react to something just because I'm supposed to, because I'm an African-American ~ Kobe Bryant

The strong man is the man who can stand up for his rights and not hit back. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

African-American women who develop breast cancer are more likely to die from the disease than White women of the same age. Survival rates are worse among African-Americans for colon, prostate and ovarian cancers as well. ~ Frank C. Garland

And although he recognized that tenderness was not the same as passion, and certainly not equivalent to love, for now it seemed to him a suitable substitute. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

African American Congressman Bobby Rush wore a hoodie on the floor of Congress to make a point this week. And they threw him out. They said a hoodie is too scary for Congress. Too scary? Have you ever looked into Michele Bachmann's eyes? ~ Bill Maher

We recriminalized black life. Incarceration rates since the 1908s have gone through the roof, overwhelmingly black males, women and Hispanics to some extent. Essentially re-doing what happened under Reconstruction. That's the history of African Americans - so how can any one say there's no problem. Sure, racism is serious, but it's worse than that. ~ Noam Chomsky

A play is a blueprint of an event: a way of creating and rewriting history through the medium of literature. Since history is a recorded or remembered event, theatre, for me, is the perfect place to 'make' history--that is, because so much of African-American history has been unrecorded, dismembered, washed out, one of my tasks as a playwright is to--through literature and the special strange relationship between theatre and real-life--locate the ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down. ~ Suzan-Lori Parks

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association predicts that a child born in 2000 has a one-in-three chance of developing diabetes. (An African American child's chances are two in five.) ~ Michael Pollan

NEVER GO TO SLEEP KNOWING THE SAME THING YOU KNEW THE NIGHT BEFORE! ~ Qwana M. BabyGirl Reynolds-Frasier

Sen. Joe Biden, on the day of announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, called Barack Obama the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright, and ... clean. I think we've seen the shortest presidential campaign in history. ~ Jay Leno

It's a fact: black people in this country die more easily, at all ages, across genders. Look at how young black men die, and how middle-aged black men drop dead, and how black women are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. The numbers graft to poverty but they also graph to stresses known and invisible. How did we come here, after all? Not with upturned chins and bright eyes but rather in chains, across a chasm. But what did we do? We built a nation, and we built its art. ~ Elizabeth Alexander

Dear Non-Black American,
when you comes to the United States, you become black.No matter of your origin. Stop saying you are Liberian, Jamaican, Belizean, Nigerian,
South African or Ghanaian. White America doesn't care about all that bull, that's why on the work application it doesn't give you the option to say Ghanaian or Jamaican, it says "African American. ~ Henry Johnson Jr

Some people would view Jackie Robinson as a very safe African-American, a docile figure who had a tendency to try to get along with everyone, and when you look at his history, you learn that he has this fire that allows him to take this punishment but also figure out savvy ways of giving it back. ~ Chadwick Boseman

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched. ~ Henry Louis Gates

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

Whenever a word 'nigga' is spoken, It's always followed by the same question, Can white people say nigger ?
and the correct answer is Not really. ~ Auliq A

I have found that, in the African American oral tradition, if the words are enunciated eloquently enough, no one examines the meaning for definitive truth. ~ Mat Johnson

We have to have a national conversation about how police forces should interact with the African-American community, who happens to be paying their salary, who want to be served and protected, who these officers are take an oath to do so. ~ William Lacy Clay, Jr.

like many families, everyone wandered around like children in a funhouse - they could hardly see one another around the corners, and what they could see was completely distorted. ~ James Hannaham

Life is a daily cleansing. Negativity must be washed away, if you wish to attract positive experiences to your life. ~ Leon Brown

Love can give you the most exhilarating wonderful highs at times ...
... Then there will be dives that will take all you have just to hold on ...
Quote on the Title Page of Love TORN Asunder ~ Elizabeth Funderbirk

The suburbanization and the ghettos that were created as a result of the limits of where [African-Americans] could live in the North [still exist today.] And ... the South was forced to change, in part because they were losing such a large part of their workforce through the Great Migration. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

I'd be happy if people said that I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music. ~ Ahmet Ertegun

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law. ~ James Baldwin

To my knowledge, no progressive educator has ever suggested that children didn't need to know the "mere facts" about the contributions of African Americans to our society. ~ Sol Stern

I am a colored woman or a Negro woman. Either one is OK. People dislike those words now. Today these use this term African American. It wouldn't occur to me to use that. I prefer to think of myself as an American, that's all! ~ Annie Elizabeth Delany

Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double. ~ Chaka Fattah

Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such ... he hath made all men free and equal. Then why should one worm say to another, 'Keep you down there, while I sit up yonder; for I am better than thou? ~ Maria W. Stewart

Forgiveness is a big part of - especially post-civil rights movement - is a big part of African-American Christianity, and I wasn't raised within the Christian church; I wasn't raised within any church. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Crisis' seems to be too mild a word to describe conditions in countless African-American communities. It is beyond crisis when in the richest nation in the world, African Americans in Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations of the world. ~ Johnnetta B. Cole

< ... > many national leaders including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King saw American slavery as an immense problem, a curse, a blight, or a national disease. If the degree of their revulsion varied, they agreed that the nation would be much safer, purer, happier, and better off without the racial slavery that they had inherited from previous generations and, some of them would emphasize, from England. Most of them also believed that America would be an infinitely better and less complicated place without the African American population, which most white leaders associated with all the defects, mistakes, sins, shortcomings, and animality of an otherwise almost perfect nation. ~ David Brion Davis

When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it. ~ James Brown

I have always respected everyone's ... ~ Hazel Scott

I took my solo and beat hell out of the skins. Then Spoof swiped at his mouth and let go with a blast and moved it up into that squeal and stopped and started playing. It was all headwork. All new to us.

New to anybody.

I saw Sonny get a look on his face, and we sat still and listened while Spoof made love to that horn.

Now like a scream, now like a laugh - now we're swinging in the trees, now the white men are coming, now we're in the boat and chains are hanging from our ankles and we're rowing, rowing - Spoof, what is it? - now we're sawing wood and picking cotton and serving up those cool cool drinks to the Colonel in his chair - Well, blow, man! - now we're free, and we're struttin' down Lenox Avenue and State & Madison and Pirate's Alley, laughing, crying - Who said free? - and we want to go back and we don't want to go back - Play it, Spoof! God, God, tell us all about it! Talk to us! - and we're sitting in a cellar with a comb wrapped up in paper, with a skin-barrel and a tinklebox - Don't stop, Spoof! Oh Lord, please don't stop! - and we're making something, something, what is it? Is it jazz? Why, yes, Lord, it's jazz. Thank you, sir, and thank you, sir, we finally got it, something that is ours, something great that belongs to us and to us alone, that we made, and that's why it's important and that's what it's all about and - Spoof! Spoof, you can;t stop now --

But it was over, middle of the trip. And there was Spoof st ~ Charles Beaumont

Enthusiasm is everything. It must ... ~ Pele

I do not share the gloomy thought that Negroes in America are doomed to be stomped out bodaciously, nor even shackled to the bottom of things. Of course some of them will be tromped out, and some will always be at the bottom, keeping company with other bottom-folks. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

The president is not doing well with African Americans. His popularity rating - his approval rating - with blacks: two percent. Two percent. That is somewhere between Mark Fuhrman and sickle cell anemia. ~ Bill Maher

Laura picked up the menu again. "In graduate school I knew a woman from Africa who was just like this doctor, I think she was from Uganda. She was wonderful, and she didn't get along with the African-American woman in our class at all. She didn't have all those issues." "Maybe when the African American's father was not allowed to vote because he was black, the Ugandan's father was running for parliament or studying at Oxford," Ifemelu said. Laura stared at her, made a mocking confused face. "Wait, did I miss something?" "I just think it's a simplistic comparison to make. You need to understand a bit more history," Ifemelu said. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The people did not go away, of course; once a people arise, they never go away (a fact which should be included in the Marine handbook). ~ James Baldwin

In 1900, 180-plus out of every 1,000 African-American babies died. ~ Peter Diamandis

I didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world. ~ Lee Daniels

I'm always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me. ~ Matt Kemp

The soul that is within me no man can degrade. ~ Frederick Douglass

It was as if hell itself had taken human form and come up from the abyss. ~ Brima Lamin & Chantale Wesley-Lamin, The Walk - Memoir Of A Liberian Civil War Survivor, 2016

Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious and ambitious ones to be found - although I acknowledge, with extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class among yourselves? ~ Maria W. Stewart

This book is dedicated to every woman who has ever felt self-conscious about her size. Outer beauty comes in all sizes, shapes, heights, ages, and colors. And inner beauty will always shine through, no matter what the packaging. ~ Raynetta Manees

It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

I think, when the African-American community understands my record on criminal justice, my record on economics, the agenda we're bringing forth, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, dealing with the fact that we have more people in jail, shamefully, than any other country on Earth, that I am against the death penalty, Secretary Clinton is not, I think, as people become familiar with my ideas, we are going to do better and better. ~ Bernie Sanders

When I was15 years old, I couldn't look at the NFL and look on TV and say, 'Boy, there's a head coach, African American. That's something I'd like to do.' ~ Tony Dungy

Gosnell is African American, and there is a persistent myth that serial killers are all white men. But that's not true. There are serial killers from all ethnic groups: White, African American, Hispanic, and Asian. ~ Ann McElhinney

It's an honor to be a part of Magic Shave as their new ambassador. One of the problems that some African-American men have with shaving is razor bumps. Magic Shave is perfect because once you eliminate the razor, you eliminate the bumps, and it's so easy to use. ~ Lance Gross

One of two historically African American communities that sprang up along the Mississippi Gulf Coast after emancipation, North Gulfport has always been a place where residents have had fewer civic resources than those extended to other outlying communities. ~ Natasha Trethewey

Stand-ups are always good to see on YouTube. There's a guy named Mike Head who lives in Cleveland. He's great. He's an African-American stand-up. ~ Allison Jones

The Democratic party in Louisiana just continued to move father and farther away from basic American values and farther away from the voters of Louisiana. And much farther away from me. So I just couldn't take it anymore. And recently, there was some comments made in the Senate, the comments were that if anyone opposes what we frequently call Obamacare, if anyone opposes it, they do so only because the President is an African-American, and therefore, that position is racist. My mother, who's 103 years old, called me on the telephone when she heard that. She said 'Boy, I don't want you to be involved in anything like that. I hope you disassociated yourself from that' and I was on the verge of doing it anyway, and that was just the last straw, ~ Elbert Guillory

On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so he hoped. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I understand how difficult it can be for an African-American in today's society. In fact, I can relate to black people very well indeed. My ancestors once owned slaves, and it is in my lineage to work closely with the black community. However, just because they were freed over a century ago doesn't mean they can now be freeloaders. They need to be told to work hard, and the incentives just aren't there for them anymore. When I'm president I plan to work closely with the black community to bring a sense of pride and work ethic back into view for them. ~ Mitt Romney

His fierce appreciation of female beauty, the unrelenting desire he felt for their company, the pleasure he both derived and sought to give, had led him in and out of quite a few bedroom doors. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I knew that there were several, among African-American leaders, who had been put out by me because of my failure or reluctance to endorse Sen. Kerry. ~ Rodney Alexander

Never Let anyone tell you that you can't; show them that you can. ~ Gloria Mallette

In the 1800s, the United States was divided over the issue of slavery. The North wanted the country to end all slavery. But the South wanted to keep slaves because more than four million African-American slaves worked in the huge plantation fields there. This disagreement between the North and South led to the Civil War. Jack ~ Mary Pope Osborne

I want to introduce my readers to people they may never have met, take them places they may never have visited, and present them with situations they may never have encountered. ~ J. Everett Prewitt

For poetry and I are one
To separate is to decapitate
For my poetry is forever. ~ Kerry D. Brackett

Entering the foyer, Royale already decided that he would thank Shake once more for being by his side at Keena's recital. But she stunned him by eagerly waiting for him just like old times - on her knees wearing only a collar and a leash. ~ S.B. Redd

My Native American heritage was not embraced by our family, and we grew up African-American, so I didn't have a lot of access or history to that line of my family. ~ Tamara Tunie