Black Women Quotes

I'm convinced that we Black women possess a special indestructible strength that allows us to not only get down, but to get up, to get through, and to get over. ~ Janet Jackson

And while the black women are the most hidden of the mathematicians who worked at the NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and later at NASA, they were not sitting alone in the shadows: the white women who made up the majority of Langley's computing workforce over the years have hardly been recognized for their contributions to the agency's long-term success. Virginia Biggins worked the Langley beat for the Daily Press newspaper, covering the space program starting in 1958. "Everyone said, 'This is a scientist, this is an engineer,' and it was always a man," she said in a 1990 panel on Langley's human computers. She never got to meet any of the women. "I just assumed they were all secretaries," she said. Five ~ Margot Lee Shetterly

It's really not enough to just have black women. A really good idea could be to comment on how they are treated by society. ~ Lea DeLaria

As far back as slavery, white people established a social hierarchy based on race and sex that ranked white men first, white women second, though sometimes equal to black men, who are ranked third, and black women last. What this means in terms of the sexual politics of rape is that if one white woman is raped by a black man, it is seen as more important, more significant than if thousands of black women are raped by one white man. Most Americans, and that includes black people, acknowledge and accept this hierarchy; they have internalized it either consciously or unconsciously. And for this reason, all through American history, black male rape of white women has attracted much more attention and is seen as much more significant than rape of black women by either white or black men. ~ Bell Hooks

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

We believe in equality for all, and privileges for none. This is a belief that each American regardless of background has equal standing in the public forum, all of us. Because we believe this idea so firmly, we are an inclusive, rather than an exclusive party. Let everybody come. ~ Barbara Jordan

The black woman had had to struggle against being a person of great strength. ~ Dorothy Height

Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression. ~ Audre Lorde

But equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality. Because black men were disproportionately incarcerated and black women disproportionately evicted, uniformly denying housing to applicants with recent criminal or eviction records still had an incommensurate impact on African Americans. ~ Matthew Desmond

Even if you meet the perfect person, it ain't gonna be at the perfect time. You're married, they're single. That's right. You're Jewish, they're Palestinian. You're a Mexican, they're a raccoon. You're a black woman, he's a black man. ~ Chris Rock

To my Newly Forming Black Radical mind, women -- more specifically black women -- had a way of existing without being present. It's a natural result of consuming history and culture through the fables of masculine triumph. ~ Mychal Denzel Smith

She's an original! She doesn't need to compete, copy, or envy other women. The confidence that's within her won't allow her to stoop that low. She's a Queen! And jealousy isn't something that she cares to entertain. Insecurity isn't in her DNA. She shines! She succeeds! She's a quality woman with purpose! She empowers, inspires, motivates, and celebrates other women. But depending on how you feel about yourself, you'll either admire and respect her or hate on her. Listen, it's okay to acknowledge other Queens! Don't be an undercover hater. Have self-confidence and allow YOUR light to shine. ~ Stephanie Lahart

I love black women. I live for them. They are everything to me. I'm obsessed with them. They are sophisticated, resilient and smarter than me. ~ Lee Daniels

Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing. ~ Toni Morrison

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom. ~ Alice Walker

What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor - even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same. ~ Ijeoma Oluo

Black female entrepreneurs don't make excuses, we find solutions. We're leaders, resourceful, ambitious, hardworking, and creative. We're powerful, unstoppable, confident, smart, and fearless. We're Exquisite Black Queens that represent Black Excellence… We are success! There's no denying it… Black female entrepreneurs are resilient and we rock! ~ Stephanie Lahart

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

We know the road of lack of recognition, of people telling us that we can't headline a movie because black women don't translate overseas, that every time we try to break the glass ceiling, people say no, people push back. And it's everything that people don't see out there. ~ Viola Davis

Black women ... are trained from childhood to become workers, and expect to be financially self-supporting for most of their lives. They know they will have to work, whether they are married or single; work to them, unlike to white women, is not a liberating goal, but rather an imposed lifelong necessity. ~ Gerda Lerner

Katz traces the courageous role of Black women in settling the West (and] deftly shows how these pioneering spirits helped stabilize early communities in Texas, Oklahoma, California and elsewhere. ~ Herb Boyd

I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly. ~ Bessie Coleman

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them. ~ Maya Angelou

I used to think I was ugly. I thought I looked like a camel. A person who doesn't love themselves, they will see anything that pops up on their face. I've seen squirrels, I've seen a bird, and I've seen all kinds of animals on my face. But that is the result of self-hate. I've learned to say: 'You know what? I am a beautiful black woman'. ~ Mary J. Blige

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

Dealing with white people faux pas as a black woman is tricky: if you get upset, you can be quickly be labeled as the "angry black girl"; if you're too passive, it seems like you're give permission, or letting racism slide. ~ Franchesca Ramsey

There's something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. It's a different perspective. It is a reflection as opposed to an interpretation, and I think we get a lot of interpretations about the lives of women that are not coming from women. ~ Ava DuVernay

Anytime you're with somebody, you become a reflection of that person. I believe the first five years of our relationship was me grooming her, getting her tough and getting her ready for all of this and how to deal with it. The last was just her being a strong Black woman who has her man's back. ~ Snoop Dogg

Through Miss Behave I am attempting to reclaim my voice one word at a time and live my truth to the best of my ability ~ Malebo Sephodi

At the tender age of 19 Bessie Stringfield commenced traveling across the United States. She'd toss a penny onto a map of the States and wherever it landed was where she'd go, and this was at the height of racism at its ugliest, yet this never stopped her. Though often denied accommodation because of the colour of her skin, she would find a place to sleep with black families or, if this wasn't possible, she'd simply sleep on her motorbike at filling stations, using her rolled up jacket as a pillow ~ Karl Wiggins

A woman doesn't always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Everyone of us has lain down for a reason that was not love. ~ Tayari Jones

She was black, too, or rather, a delicious shade of café au lait, and this, we were constantly told, represented progression an industry concerned merely with surfaces. (I am dubious: could it not be that, this season, café au lait was the 'in' shade? Have we seen a sudden influx of black women into the industry in Landry's wake? Have our notions of female beauty been revolutionised by her success? Are black Barbies now out-selling white?) ~ Robert Galbraith

I am an educated black woman in a time when educated black people will be called upon to risk everything for the rights of black people everywhere. ~ Allan Dare Pearce

Radical militant feminist believes that women of color and Black women in particular have written the cutting edge theory and really were the individuals who exploded feminist theory into the directions that has made it more powerful. So I see us as the leaders not just of Black people and Black women in terms of feminism but in terms of the movement as a whole. ~ Bell Hooks

And, where white women are slapped down for daring to be sexual, women of color are slapped down for daring to be anything else: Over the course of her career, Nicki Minaj has spoken about abortion rights, the need for female musicians to write their own work, the difficulty of being an assertive woman in a business setting, and the obstacles black women face in being recognized as creative forces. She is the best-selling female rapper of all time, and her success had done a tremendous amount to awaken critical and commercial interest in female voices within a genre that was largely seen (fairly or unfairly) as a man's game before she showed up. Nicki Minaj has done everything in her power to frame herself as a thoughtful black feminist voice, up to and including staging public readings of Maya Angelou poems. And yet, approximately 89 percent of Nicki Minaj's press coverage, outside of the feminist blogosphere, tends to focus on: her butt. ~ Sady Doyle

I look at Woody Allen's prolific career of 30 or 40 films, and I'm watching the clock. I'd love to work at a clip of a film a year. We don't get the benefit of the doubt, particularly black women. We're presumed incompetent, whereas a white male is assumed competent until proven otherwise. They just think the guy in the ball hat and the T-shirt over the thermal has got it, whether he's got it or not. For buzzy first films by a white male, the trajectory is a 90-degree angle. For us, it's a 30-degree angle. ~ Dee Rees

When I started, it was all meter maids or the sassy nurse, or the sassy receptionist in the hospital. And I felt like: Are those the only jobs that large, black women have? ~ Retta

Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians. ~ Gore Vidal

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. ~ Toni Morrison

No, I'm NOT Team Light Skin. No, I'm NOT Team Dark Skin. No, I'm NOT Team Brown Skin. I'm Team Melanin because we are one! I'm a Black Queen that celebrates ALL shades of Black beauty. Black women and Black girls are equally beautiful in EVERY shade. Our skin tones are Exquisite Beauty. Respect the complexion! ~ Stephanie Lahart

WE [black women] HAVE ADAPTED TO A SOCIETY THAT DOES'NT HONOR US. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

If you go to a network and say, "I wanna do prison stories about black women and Latino women and old women," you're not gonna make a sale. But, if you've got this blonde girl going to prison, you can get in there, and then you can tell all the stories. I just thought it was a terrific gateway drug into all the things I wanted to get into. ~ Jenji Kohan

How can we teach our children to respect Black women if Black women don't respect Black women? ~ T.D. Jakes

The only crime I'm guilty of is being a young black woman. ~ Foxy Brown

I think I'm doing a service to black women by portraying myself as a sex machine. I mean, what's wrong with being a sex machine, darling? Sex is large, sex is life, sex is as large as life, so it appeals to anyone that's living, or rather it should. ~ Grace Jones

Accept it… Black women are beautiful, pretty, gorgeous, appealing, elegant, attractive, lovely, stunning, and exquisite. ~ Stephanie Lahart

If you are a black woman, you get two history months in a row. ~ Artie Lange

Reinvent yourself over and over and over and over and over until you find home. There is no timeline for the soul. ~ Malebo Sephodi

I think the number one thing Black women and all Black people should be paying attention to is our health. ~ Bell Hooks

Black Barbie? Nah… I'm an unapologetic Exquisite Black Queen who's intelligent, creative, courageous, confident, ambitious, and authentic. My beauty is just a bonus! ~ Stephanie Lahart

Ever since the romantic comedy-drama 'She's Gotta Have It' antagonized black women and black men in 1986, Spike Lee's films have enjoyed the outrage of various groups. ~ Lee Siegel

Not all black women have silently acquiesced in sexism and misogyny within the African-American community. Indeed, many writers, activists, and other women have voiced their opposition and paid the price: they have been ostracized and branded as either man- haters or pawns of white feminists, two of the more predictable modes of disciplining and discrediting black feminists. ~ Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

Black women, whose experience is unique, are seldom recognized as a particular social-cultural entity and are seldom thought to be important enough for serious scholarly consideration. ~ Barbara Smith

There are not many of us African American Sister Presidents, and those of us who are in this field do not have an easy time of it. Why the story goes that one Black woman college president died and went to hell, and it was two weeks before she realized that she wasn't still on the job. ~ Johnnetta B. Cole

Many of the white women at Mills who called themselves feminists didn't understand my experiences as a black woman. In women's studies classes, for example, the individual histories and struggles of black women were often ignored...I declared myself a womanist when I realized that white women's feminism really didn't speak to my needs as the daughter of a black, single, domestic worker. I felt that, historically, white women were working hard to liberate themselves from housework and childcare, while women of color got stuck cleaning their kitchens and raising their babies. When I realized that feminism largely liberated white women at the economic and social expense of women of color, I knew I was fundamentally unable to call myself a feminist. ~ Taigi Smith

Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka and other black male leaders have righteously supported patriarchy. They have all argued that it is absolutely necessary for black men to relegate black women to a subordinate position both in the political sphere and in home life. ~ Bell Hooks

Don't settle for average. Bring your best to the moment. Then, whether it fails or succeeds, at least you know you gave all you had. We need to live the best that's in us. ~ Angela Bassett

The modern church encourages African-American women to keep others' vineyards, while neglecting their own, in two ways: by venerating Black women's performance of strength and depending upon women's labor and financial support to maintain the church, without providing equal opportunity for Black women to exercise their gifts in ministerial leadership; and by distorting Scripture in a way that encourages suffering and self-sacrifice among Black women. ~ Chanequa Walker-Barnes

The deeply satisfying aspect of the rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston is that black women generated it primarily to establish a maternal literary ancestry. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

We're going to have to debunk the myth that Africa is a heaven for black people
especially black women. We've been the mule of the world there and the mule of the world here. ~ Alice Walker

The patriarchal/kyriarchal/hegemonic culture seeks to regulate and control the body – especially women's bodies, and especially black women's bodies – because women, especially black women, are constructed as the Other, the site of resistance to the kyriarchy. Because our existence provokes fear of the Other, fear of wildness, fear of sexuality, fear of letting go – our bodies and our hair (traditionally hair is a source of magical power) must be controlled, groomed, reduced, covered, suppressed. ~ Yvonne Aburrow

She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn't kill, but she seemed to die a little. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Misbehaviour does not require a cape, shades or a bazooka. It is in decisions we make that challenge the notions adopted to keep us well behaved ~ Malebo Sephodi

Exquisite... I was born this way! ~ Stephanie Lahart

Don't let anyone rob you of hope. ~ Pope Francis

I've gotten a firsthand view at the destruction that black men and black women not being able to stay and build healthy relationships has had on the black family and black children. ~ Hill Harper

The dangerously clear logic of the Negro's position will more and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization. And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen! If you deplore their presence here, they ask, Who brought us? When you cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The rape which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Hunger erased all traces of love
so I packed my philosophy and left
My philosophy being simply
I can do better by myself ~ Margaret H. Oliver

Black girls are likened more to adults than to children and are treated as if they are willfully engaging in behaviors typically expected of Black women - sexual involvement, parenting or primary caregiving, workforce participation, and other adult behaviors and responsibilities. This compression is both a reflection of deeply entrenched biases that have stripped Black girls of their childhood freedoms and a function of an opportunity-starved social landscape that makes Black girlhood interchangeable with Black womanhood. It gives credence to a widely held perception and a message that there is little difference between the two. ~ Monique Morris

The core of the culture is racism and how black men are viewed. They've always been demonized and seen as threats in our culture. Another holdover from slavery. We've got to deal with that core root of racism and demonization of the upbringing of black men. Black women are not exempt by any means. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

It is a dangerous time to be a black woman in America. It's a time when we are not safe in the streets or at home or at school or at work and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Nobody. Not us. Not our mommas. Not the police. Not the people we elected to look out for our interests. Nobody. We're just out here. (p.53) ~ Pearl Cleage

I see other black women imitate my style, which is no style at all, but just letting our hair be itself. They call it the Afro Look. ~ Miriam Makeba

Black women were armed, black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose. ~ Toni Morrison

Being women together was not enough. We were different. Being gay-girls together was not enough.We were different. Being black together was not enough. We were different. Being black women together was not enough. We were different. Being black dykes together was not enough. We were different. ~ Audre Lorde

Black women have always been these vixens, these animalistic erotic women. Why can't we just be the sexy American girl next door? ~ Tyra Banks

I just have to live my truth and know that it's okay to rock on my own vibration, because I'm me. I try to stand by that code, especially as a young Black woman in this industry. I try to walk the walk and talk the talk. ~ V. Bozeman

Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests. ~ Audre Lorde

We've got to have a legacy of leadership. We've got to bring along with us a generation of black women who are going to confront twenty-first-century realities. ~ Jewell Jackson McCabe

Dating black women will ruin your life ~ Terrence Howard

No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much" ... No woman has ever written enough. ~ Bell Hooks

Woman was the test, but not every woman seemed to qualify. Black women, of course, were virtually invisible within the protracted campaign for woman suffrage. As for white working-class women, the suffrage leaders were probably impressed at first by the organizing efforts and militancy of their working-class sisters. But as it turned out, the working women themselves did not enthusiastically embrace the cause of woman suffrage. ~ Angela Y. Davis

Pauline felt uncomfortable with the few black women she met. They were amused by her because she did not straighten her hair. When she tried to make up her face as they did, it came off rather badly. Their goading glances and private snickers at her way of talking (saying "chil'ren") and dressing developed in her a desire for new clothes. ~ Toni Morrison

Let's just say its not a stereotype that black women are less submissive and harder to deal with. Being around all them black women made me really miss my wife. ~ Taye Diggs

I want to live in a society where we are all liberated. This is what my feminism looks like ~ Malebo Sephodi

You can fall, but you can rise also. ~ Angelique Kidjo

The myth of black women profiting at the expense of black men is the oldest rap around. ~ Johnnetta B. Cole

Women's actions have never been more than symbolic agitation; they have won only what men have been willing to concede to them; they have taken nothing; they have received.5 It is that they lack the concrete means to organize themselves into a unit that could posit itself in opposition. They have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and unlike the proletariat, they have no solidarity of labor or interests; they even lack their own space that makes communities of American blacks, the Jews in ghettos, or the workers in Saint-Denis or Renault factories. They live dispersed among men, tied by homes, work, economic interests, and social conditions to certain men - fathers or husbands - more closely than to other women. As bourgeois women, they are in solidarity with bourgeois men and not with women proletarians; as white women, they are in solidarity with white men and not with black women. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Back home the black women are all beautiful ~ Amiri Baraka

The enormous spotlight that focused on King, combined with the construction of Rosa Parks as a saintly symbol, hid the women's long struggle in the dimly lit background, obscuring the origins of the MIA and erasing women from the movement. For decades, the Montgomery bus boycott has been told as a story triggered by Rosa Park's spontaneous refusal to give up her seat followed by the triumphant leadership of men like Fred Gray, Martin Luther King, Jr., E. D. Nixon, and Ralph Abernathy. While these men had a major impact on the emerging protest movement, it was black women's decade-long struggle against mistreatment and abuse by white bus drivers and police officers that launched the boycott. Without an appreciation for the particular predicaments of black women in the Jim Crow South, it is nearly impossible to understand why thousands of working-class and hundreds of middle-class black women chose to walk rather than ride the bus for 381 days. ~ Danielle L. McGuire

White men get a choice. They get to choose they job, they house. They get to choose to make black babies, then disappear into thin air, like they wasn't never there to begin with, like these black women they slept with or raped done laid on top of themselves and got pregnant. White men get to choose for black men too. Used to sell 'em; now they just send 'em to prison like my daddy, so that they can't be with they kids. ~ Yaa Gyasi

Black women, white women- all of them. I'm colorblind. I don't know the difference. I only know you're a human being and you're my children. ~ Moms Mabley

I was blessed to get an education available to few black women in Africa at that time. Every woman should be able to get an education so she can serve others. ~ Julia Mavimbela

Navigating joy and trauma simultaneously - #aBlacklifemanifesto ~ Malebo Sephodi

Many of the women I met there (Yale) had come from the most privileged of circumstances, yet they often referred to themselves as "oppressed." I found it hard to take their "oppression" seriously, since I'd spent the first part of my life living among black women who cooked and kept house for the middle and upper class whites of Savannah. They never talked about being oppressed. What right, then, did the elite white women of Yale have to complain about their lot? ~ Clarence Thomas

Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously. ~ Bell Hooks

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too. ~ Maya Angelou

I longed to love this frame that was projected towards me. I continued staring. This was me, my body, and it was mine. ~ Malebo Sephodi

Black women were beautifully created at birth. We were blessed with melanin in our skin, which makes us Exquisitely Beautiful. From the lightest to the darkest skin tone, our melanin is Fiercely Poppin' on Purpose. There's no denying it, a Black woman's beauty is elegant! We are Black Queens... Uniquely perfect, flaws and all! ~ Stephanie Lahart

No woman on this whole earth can please me and cook for me and socialise and talk to me like my American black woman. ~ Muhammad Ali

Black women don't have the same body image problems as white women. They are proud of their bodies. ~ Tyra Banks