Malachi Kirby Quotes

The Afrocentric exploration of the black past only scratches the surface. A full examination of the ancestry of those who are referred to in the newspapers as blacks and African Americans must include Europe and Native America.

We know nothing about Africa, although our roots are there in terms of our forbearers. But I mean as far as the average Negro today, he knows nothing about Africa. And I think he's got to face the fact that he is an American, his culture is basically American, and one becomes adjusted to this when he realizes what, what he is.

We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us.

Inspired by Alex Haley's 'Roots,' at the age of 11 I began a handwritten Middle Passage story called 'Lawdy, Lawdy, Make Us Free.' I was raised by civil rights activists with a very strong sense of racial history and consciousness.

I think until Britain acknowledges just how much of a presence black people had here before the Sixties, then there are certain stories that are not going to be inclusive of what I have to offer.

My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose... Africa... but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race... in some ways even more so, because they gave the sweat of their brow and their blood in slavery so that many parts of America could become prosperous and recognized in the world.

We examine and highlight the history of the African descendants in America, and know that each and every one of us has come this far because of our faith in this country.

My parents never told us that our great-grandmothers had been slaves.

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.

I think all in all, one thing a lot of plays seem to be saying is that we need to, as black Americans, to make a connection with our past in order to determine the kind of future we're going to have. In other words, we simply need to know who we are in relation to our historical presence in America.

Afro-American

The Negro is essentially the child of the moment and his memory, both tribal and individual, is very short

The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future ... History must restore what slavery took away

I stand by 'Roots' as symbol of the fate of my people.

We started the family Bible after slavery was abolished. My great-grandmother remembered the Bible being started, which meant that she was a slave as a young girl. When she died, the Bible was at least 105 years old, so she must have been nearly 115 years old. Her daughter, my grandmother, died at 97, and her husband at 98.

I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?

When I was in school, my first acknowledgement of 'Roots' was Kunta Kinte.

I was 22 when my mother gave me the original box set of 'Roots' and she said, 'I want you to watch this.' I watched the whole thing back to back in the span of 24 hours. It had a profound effect on me. It felt like my story.

Black History Month is a poignant time for the entire country, but particularly the African American community.

My mom went through civil rights; my dad went through civil rights. My name was Kenya because they wanted to give me an African name.

It's crazy: the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explorer, with the Spaniards. That's something for me - as a black American, it gives me a little bit of pride because we were free and respected somewhere else before slavery became what it was.

What prevailed was that it was a family story, so it didn't matter what the color. It was also the perfect subject matter for a miniseries: A best-selling book, a generational story, a social problem - they all made 'Roots' what a miniseries should be.

I be off the slave ships, building pyramids, writing my own hieroglyphs

I think that is what we do by preserving and telling our stories. If you don't tell your stories, other people will tell their story about you. It's important that we nurture and protect these memories. Things change. Existence means change. So, the kind of precious memories about being black for my generation won't exist for my kids' and grandkids' generations unless we preserve them through fiction, through film, through comic books, and every other form of media we can possibly utilize to perpetuate the story of the great African-American people.

I'm African American / I'm African / I'm black as the moon.