Aldis Hodge Quotes

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.

There's a really great documentary called 'Many Rivers,' which documents the totality of slavery from its inception, and then it gives you a little history on how America came to prominence. It's crazy - the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explorer, with the Spaniards.

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.

I am proud of my black roots and of the black blood that runs in my veins.

No one thinks of Mexico and Peru as black. But Mexico and Peru together got 700,000 Africans in the slave trade. The coast of Acapulco was a black city in the 1870s. And the Veracruz Coast on the gulf of Mexico and the Costa Chica, south of Acapulco are traditional black lands.

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

Black history is American history.

Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off.

There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.

The history of the black man did not begin with slavery.

Negro President

Nobody really loves America more than black Americans, because black Americans loved America even when America didn’t love us back

The thing is, so much of the African American experience is about the redefinition of roots because of slavery. We were uprooted, and there's so much about our whole legacy that was stolen and that we lost in the Transatlantic slave trade that we'll never find out.

I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone who's told me that the story of 'Roots' isn't important.

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

We cannot forget that America was built on Africa.

We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs … black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history.

After the Civil war, everybody in retrospect claimed to be an abolitionist. It’s amazing that slavery survived so long when there were so many abolitionists.

Afro-American

The issue is whether or not Americans such as myself ... will have to suffer the indignity of being reminded time and time again that at one point in this country's history, we were human chattel. This vote is about race ... and the single most painful episode in American history.

It is something singular that the colored race—those in reality most interested in the future destinies of Africa—should be so lightly affected by the evidences continually being presented in favor of colonization

The time has gone by for colored people to talk of patriotism: ... He used to be proud that his grandfather … fought for liberty in the Revolutionary War. But that time had passed by.

Do you have any idea what Ali meant to black people? He was the leader of a nation, the leader of Black America. As a young black, at times I was ashamed of my color; I was ashamed of my hair. And Ali made me proud.

My father marched in Selma. My father was there in Alabama. That's where I was born. My birth certificate says 'colored.' It does not say I'm African-American or black. So for me, those are real realities that are not subject to opinion.

In the end, of course, Republicans ended slavery and permanently outlawed it through the Thirteenth Amendment.