Benjamin Todd Jealous Quotes

My number one priority is to save the Black man.

White America's live under this accusation that they're racist, they need to prove that they're not racist. In order to prove that you're not racist, you need to take over the fate of black people and say, go with us, we'll engineer you into the future, we'll engineer you into equality.

I think it's important for black people in general to be aware of what's going on and do what you got to work around it. Not bow down to it publicly.

Du Bois marked a great stage in the history of Negro struggles when he said that Negroes could no longer accept the subordination which Booker T. Washington had preached.

It is over one hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The Negro people in the United States have taken plenty and they have reached a stage where they have decided that they are not going to take any more.

Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.

Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time.

I'll also say, yes, I think the change in black consciuosness in recent years has made me more sensitive to injustice in every area of my life.

We are better off than all the other Black people in the entire world. We are the hope and aspiration of Blacks in the rest of the world.

We want Black power.

I think #BlackLivesMatter is a huge campaign that is important and integral to our advancement as a people.

I'm interested in seeing artists whom I respect who are very focused on the Black Lives Matter moment, bringing that into storytelling in a way that really amplifies the beauty and the humanity of people of color, and does it without having to wave a big sign that says, 'This is what we're doing.'

I was in the Black Power movement. I feel as energized about Black Lives Matter. I don't feel in any way separated from Black Lives Matter. I do believe we are hand and glove. I am the legislative tool.

In 2013, I helped create a black-centered political will- and movement-building project called #BlackLivesMatter.

People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.

I wasn't an Uncle Tom and I never was gonna be.

I was in awe of previous black liberation struggle leaders - Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells. I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. Black Lives Matter has been that.

10 years ago the black man knew what his condition was. And today, because of the world revolution that's taking place all over this earth, the black man would be fighting for what he knows is his by right, but the movement on the part of [Martin Luther] King and the others had done nothing but slow down the militancy that is inherent in the nature of the black man.

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

Malcolm X never renounced and never stepped away from a strong commitment to black nationalism and black self-determination. That's absolutely clear if you do any analysis of his speeches.

We cannot hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic and self-sacrificing leadership of the blacks which their present situation so eloquently demands. Such leadership, such social teaching and example, must come from the blacks themselves.

I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.

I think you'll find also that if the negro ever realizes that he should begin to fight for real for his freedom, there are many whites who will fight on his side with him.

I thought our community should have a deep dialogue to make black America better. I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.

Look at liberty's greatest historic advances: ending slavery. Giving women the vote. Outlawing legal segregation. Each and every time, the people at the forefront of advancing those reforms - often putting their lives on the line - called themselves liberals.