Hiram Rhodes Revels Quotes

We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.

Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals.

Until Lee Elder, the only blacks at the Masters were caddies or waiters. To ask a black man what he feels about the traditions of the Masters is like asking him how he feels about his forefathers who were slaves.

The existence of laws in the States where the newly emancipated negroes reside, which discriminated with gross injustice and hardship against them as a class, was the evil to be remedied …. The one pervading purpose, was protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.

Thought the colored man is no longer subject to be bought and sold, he is still surrounded by an adverse sentiment which fetters all his movements. In his downward course he meets with no resistance, but his course upward is resisted at every step of his progress.

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 Negro people, most exploited of the toilers, suffering from lynching and Jim Crowism, robbed of their constitutional rights, are being prepared to fight another war for 'democracy' in order to further enslave them.

Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot.

Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.

I have lived a life that has been beautiful and painful at some moments. But I am convinced others can learn how to control a certain kind of rage that bubbles up in many Americans, particularly, but not limited to, women, blacks, and other minorities.

When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. That's a terrible burden.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

The challenges African-Americans are facing today are rooted in the system of slavery.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned.

I'm not trying to say that it never hurt or that I never felt its sting, but I can honestly say that I never blamed anybody for racism. I have considered it more of a manifestation of humanity's problem rather than my personal problem.

I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.

We Muslims believe that the white race, which is guilty of having oppressed and exploited and enslaved our people here in America, should and will be the victims of God's divine wrath.

The perpetuation of slavery, the exile and extermination of American Indians, and the passage of Jim Crow laws weren't carried out at the bidding of a few malefactors of great wealth.

The legacy of slavery comes from the sustained political, legal and economic effort to link permanently an entire group of people to poverty - and to mystify that systematic disenfranchisement by making up something called race, which could serve as a distraction.

The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.

Do you know, it's funny, but I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being black as a disadvantage.

Every institution where a number of the coloured races are, or can be drawn together, shall be broken up… If we destroy, or prevent the building of the nest, we shall not be liable to the incursions of the brood.