Pearl Cleage Quotes

So now I'm going to forget the 400 years of lynching and killing raping and depriving my people feeding of justice and equality and the lowest of low last respect and I'm going to look at two or three white people who are trying to do right and don't see the other million who are trying to kill me? I'm not that big of a fool.

I see so many ways America uses to rob Negroes and it is sinful and America can't keep holding on, and doing these things.

America has allowed white people to kill and brutalize those they don't like.

Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both.

Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.' Wouldn't they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism.

So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.

We've begun to put fear into those whites who think they can do anything they want to a black person and get away with it.

Although black and white Americans live, work, and learn together now, there is still injustice in America.

Terrorism is not new to black people.

Crimes are more often committed out of fear than wickedness. People live frightened, desperate lives.

The white man's victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.

Abolish lynching

Every type of discrimination whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God's intent.

America is yours [Whites] today because of crime and violence.

One hundred years ago the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin…. The negro today asks for justice. We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we answer “Patience.”

The trend of psychology, education, anthropology, and social science is toward environmentalism in the explanation of group differences, which means that the racial beliefs which defended caste are being torn away. It also means, by implication, that the white majority group in power is accused of being the cause of the Negro's deficiencies and unhappiness.

For years now I have heard the word “Wait”. It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never”.

Shame on America for the plight of the Negroes

If I wrote in Michael Harrington's time, roughly 50 years later when he published 'The Other America', I'd still be writing about poverty and also entrenched racial injustice.

I've heard it said that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. To that end, I think it's worth noting that the very first police force in America was created as a 'patrol' to keep slave populations under control.

The George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin affair is one of the most important and clarifying moments in American history.

Chicago, I feel, is a microcosm for the segregated, violent environment that is America. I try to not only speak about these things in music, but also try to address these things in real life tangibly with action.

In order to cry out for my black brothers, I had to hate the police.

Much of the foundation of our criminal justice system is derived from slave patrols and was created when African Americans could still be bought, sold, and traded.

We've seen the worst that human beings are capable of. We've seen what happens when leaders abandon common decency in favor of rage and hate. Through the lens of history, the Holocaust happened yesterday, the civil rights movement was this morning, so we are not as out of the woods as we might have thought.