Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

In those days, man, in the '50s, black people in the South... We didn't recognize contracts that much. And we didn't recognize marriages that much, either.

People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same.

Why can a Communist eat at a lunch counter in Selma, Alabama while a Black American veteran cannot?

Martin Luther King Jr. could have argued that separate water fountains were too expensive, a waste of money. He would have been right about that. But cost was beside the point.

The Negro fought and bled and died in every war the white man waged, and he still won't give you justice. You nursed his baby and cleaned behind his wife, and he still won't give you freedom; you turned the other cheek while he lynched you and raped your women, but he still won't give you equality.

My mother was from Mississippi, or is from 'Mississippi;' my father was from Alabama. He speaks about conditions in Mississippi and Alabama. They were really the poster children for the bad public laws that segregated, according to race, in our country.

You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

What we fly today is not an enduring symbol of our heritage, but the fighting flag of those who wanted to preserve a segregated South.

Was it the intention of the framers ... to forbid the states to enact and enforce segregation statutes? If one goes to the historical materials with this specific question, the only answer is in the negative. The framers did not intend or expect then and there to outlaw segregation, which, of course, was a practice widely prevalent in the North.

The States will still retain control and govern in their own way that portion of their population without leave asked of the United States. Mr. Speaker, all the efforts made here or elsewhere to educate the negro to an equality with the white man in the southern States, either civilly, socially or politically, are perfectly idle. The negro must be kept in subordination to the white man.

When George Washington and the others created U. S. independence, they did not free the slaves; not long ago, a U. S. black athlete could not play baseball in the major leagues. And yet you called yours the freest country in the world.

Segregation not only separated the races in the South but it separated the South from the rest of the nation.

The Southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the Reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination

Southern attempts to deny blacks equal rights were turning the Constitution into a sublime and beautiful scripture—into a horrid charter of wrong.

I never rode a bus because I knew I would have to sit in the back.

The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent ... I would preserve for free white labor a fair country ... where the sons of toil, of my own race and own color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor.

I never thought, when I was a kid, that there was a sense of competition or animosity towards poor blacks. I just thought there was a recognition that they lived differently - they primarily lived on the other side of town. And we're both poor, but that's kind of it. There wasn't much explicit statement of kinship or of the lack of kinship.

If segregationists had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate today, I would not be a top contender to be president of the United States.

I grew up in a time when there was real segregation. And blacks during the 50s and so forth took a lot of responsibility for their lives because the government didn't.

Blacks have experienced a history of victimization in America, beginning obviously in slavery and then another 100 years of segregation. I grew up in segregation. I know very well what it was about and all of the difficulties it placed on black life, and how we were truly held down before the civil-rights movement.

The demise of Reconstruction had made it hard for blacks to acquire capital or to pass on property to their children. As blacks were driven from all but the most limited spheres of business and political life, the prestige of the professional rose in the black community.

Boycotts have been a critical part of social justice in American history, particularly for African-Americans.

The history of blacks is complicated, fragmented, disturbing to contemplate - not a neat trail of challenges met or of felled trees blocking the path to the mountain top.

My only crime was being born black - or being born black in Alabama.

My dad was stationed at the Pentagon when I was like middle-school age. He was support for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; his boss was Colin Powell.