304 Quotes About African-americans

Maybe the cops have got him." The knowledge of what police do to black men rose wraithlike before my eyes.

At the root of the American Negro problem is the necessity of the American white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to be able to live with himself.

There is a much-loved region in the American fantasy where pale white women float eternally under black magnolia trees, and white men with soft hands brush wisps of wisteria from the creamy shoulders of their lady loves. Harmonious black music drifts like perfume through this precious air, and nothing of a threatening nature intrudes.The South I returned to, however, was flesh-real and swollen-belly poor.

Baby, let me tell you what's going to happen. In a few years, there are going to be beautiful posters of Malcolm X, and his photographs will be everywhere. The same people who don't give a damn now will lie and say they always supported him.

Lighting: a hundred Watts Detroit, Newark and New YorkScreeching nerves, exploding mindslives tied toa policeman's whistlea welfare worker's doorbellfinger

Whenever I hear protests from the South that it should be left alone to deal with the Negro question, my thoughts go back to that scene of brutality and savagery. I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race.

The man was high yellowIn public, afraid of himself, pretending his musicWas material when in fact, it was the opposite:Like a breath that comes so quickly you knowYou’re breathing ether: either atmosphericAnd anonymous as the air against a window,Or indefinite & mute as a curtain of wind.

The Southern whites are not yet living quite in the present age; many of their general ideas hark back to a former century, some of them to the Dark Ages. In the light of other days they are sometimes magnificent. Today they are often cruel and ludicrous.

do the rosa parks say no no do the rosa parks throw your hand in the air do the rosa parks say ... no no do the rosa parks tell them: that ain't fair