1,063 Quotes About Slavery

... there are clear parallels between the Supreme Court's language describing black slaves in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford slavery case, and the court's language describing unborn babies in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).

One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one's ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slave holder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slave holder is patriotism á la carte.

The notion of racial difference—specifically the notion of white supremacy—proved far more durable than the institution that gave birth to it.

Seldom is the claim made that black Americans alive at this moment are worse off than if their ancestors had been left in Africa. Any attempt to make that case with statistics on income, life expectancy, or numerous other variables would collapse like a house of cards.

I was most keenly sensitive to know any and everything possible that had any relation to the subject of slavery. I was all ears, all eyes, whenever the words slave or slavery dropped from the lips of any white person, and more and more frequently occasions occurred when these words came leading ones in high, social debate at our house.

I had thought the Christmas Rebellion an act of treason; now I saw that for those in bondage, violence was the only choice.

Racist ideas clouded the discrimination , rationalized the racial disparities, defined the enslaved, as opposed to the enslavers, as the problem people.

Yes, death is far less dire to contemplateThan a forced marriage to an unloved mate

Society's lack of compassion for our fellow people and for animals leads to an ocean where sharks are dying by the millions and slaves are being abused by the thousands. The connection is basic: a disregard for life itself. The maelstrom of death that descends on the sharks is inevitable when society disregards the lives of workers on the high seas. If you have no respect for human life, then how can you have respect for the lives of sharks?