Maya Angelou Quotes

I almost never do anything for Black History Month, because I feel it's just another way to separate us.

When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of Negroism.

I love being black in America, and especially being black in Hollywood.

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.

I am a black woman, and my experiences would not be what they are if I wasn't. I'm so happy to share those experiences for other people to be able to learn from them.

My kids are the reason I continue to strive for something better. They know - as kids who are Muslim, Somali, black Americans - that they've always been part of a struggle and that change isn't easy.

Black Consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God's plan in creating Black people black.

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation, - we have fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this worth the striving? Would America have been America without her Negro People?

Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.

I'm a black man that is proud to be black, and I want to help the black community, but I love all mankind.

I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.

In all fields black consciousness seeks to talk to the black man in a language that is his own

To be young, gifted and black!

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

When you want a nation, that's called nationalism... Black nationalism. A revolutionary is a Black nationalist. He wants a nation.

I had many reasons for writing memoir but among them was the hope that every Latino child and adult would find something familiar in it.

Part of the history of black people in the western hemisphere, in some ways, has been fleeing from this notion that they were black. So I can represent an ideal, and with that, you can demonstrate that there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to run from, and that, in fact, a good deal of beauty that resides there.

I don't use the term "black" very often. I use the term African-American more than I use "black".

I suppose my Iranian identity is one of the driving forces for being a writer: I want to set the record straight about who I really am.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.

I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am.

It is time to celebrate the New Black Americans - those who have sealed the Deal, who aren't beholden to liberal indulgence any more than they are to the disdain of the hard Right. It is time to praise blacks who are merely undeniable in their individuality and exemplary in their levels of achievement.

I do consider myself part of black history.

My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.