Randall Robinson Quotes
This abuse cannot be a lifelong diet without a price. It gets in your craw…. These things cannot accumulate without some anger.
Randall Robinson, Director, TransAfrica, Reference to racial discrimination against African Americans, Interview with Brian Lamb, C-SPAN, February 2, 1998
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This statement was made long after slavery had been abolished and Jim Crow was on the rise in the South.
This statement was published in a major magazine of the time. It referred to a notorious lynching in the South where the victim had been brutally tortured and burned to death. In this case the victim had apparently committed a horrible crime. The Bishop condemned the horrific nature or the lynching but took the view that it was an act of insanity and that the relatives of the child killed by the lynching victim may well have been driven to insanity by the act However, this lynching, like most all in the South was not just an act of vengeance—insane or not—by relatives of a victim, it was participated on by a large mob, many of whom had no relationship to any of the parties. Whites who committed horrible crimes were rarely lynched, but many accused Blacks were lynched even though they turned out to have been innocent.
Malcolm was not an enthusiast of non violent, passive resistance a la Martin Luther King. He did not generally advocate general violence per se, but did preach the doctrine of the 21st century National Rifle Association: That everyone should be armed and use the weapons to thwart criminal attacks on them and their families. However at the time, many police departments commonly broke the law and attacked Blacks in many ways. If Malcolm had more followers there could easily have been armed pitched battles between blacks who had been attacked and police who even if their colleagues had violated the law, would not allow citizen armed defense. The non-violence of King and others, accomplished the objective with relatively few people killed and wounded. They were virtually all Black or white sympathizers however. The racists bore no physical casualties but their culture and way of life was destroyed.
The mental conditioning and brainwashing that was forced upon slaves in the American Chattel Slavery system was a major factor in the poor intellectual, analytical, emotional, and egocentric and moral development of Black slaves.
Booth was the younger son of a very prominent Northern family of actors. His older brother was considered the greatest American actor, and the rest of the family were abolitionists and vehement Union supporters. They found young John’s views reprehensible.
This was passed after the Civil War had ended---during Reconstruction. It in effect gave the local authorities control of all Blacks. Those who did not have a home, and few owned land to have one, had to have a job certified to be a white or the Negro could be arrested as a vagrant. But to get the job, they had to agree to whatever terms were offered, usually by their old slave masters.
Jones, like many religious leaders at the time was an inveterate racist. He not only branded anyone advocating against segregation as “in opposition to God”. Jones also solicited the support of the Ku Klux Klan, and like many clerics would never condemn the KKK beatings, tortures, lynchings and murders.
The highway was planned to go through a poor neighborhood which had a high percentage of Black residents—all of whom would have to find other housing and move to make room for the highway. If the government plans a highway through a wealthy area, the cost to condemn and pay for the land will be much greater than if a poor neighborhood is acquired. For urban highways, the poor almost always bear a disproportionate share of the inconvenience while the major benefit inures to the wealthy and middle class. Abbot had been a labor organizer and a professional artist before he entered politics. The graphic is of his famous poster which by itself stopped the plans to build the highway very quickly.
Randall Robinson is an African-American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the founder of TransAfrica. He is known particularly for his impassioned opposition to apartheid, and for his advocacy on behalf of Haitian immigrants and Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
