88 Quotes by John Henrik Clarke

African people need to stop shouting ‘nationtime’ until they are clear about the responsibilities of running a nation.

I am a nationalist, and a Pan-Africanist, first and foremost. I was well grounded in history before ever taking a history course. I did not spend much formal time in school – I had to work.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey’s prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality.

What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don’t know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.

When I was able to go to school in my early years, my third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, convinced me that one day I would be a writer. I heard her, but I knew that I had to leave Georgia, and unlike my friend Ray Charles, I did not go around with ‘Georgia on My Mind.’

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, African-American historians began to look at their people’s history from their vantage point and their point of view.

In the United States, the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems, was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans.