W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

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.

My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose... Africa... but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race... in some ways even more so, because they gave the sweat of their brow and their blood in slavery so that many parts of America could become prosperous and recognized in the world.

In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of civilization and science. By doing this, we may make to them some retribution for the long course of injuries we have been committing on their population.

Abraham Africanus the First

Negro President

I was taught about slavery, but it was the ancient Egyptians. That's the closest I got to African history.

The first Black Migration to this country was forced migration. It was the Middle Passage.

The need for raising the awareness of this shameful chapter in U.S. history is more apparent than ever.

African American history is really American history because African Americans really helped build this country.

The African-American experience is one of the most important threads in the American tapestry.

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.

We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.

Black history is American history.

Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.

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

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.

There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence

The Atlantic Slave Trade was greatest planned accumulation of wealth that the world has ever known.

We are still living with the ships of the Atlantic slave trade. They are ghost ships that influenced much of what we are today.

Slavery is the first form of Globalization in which America participated.

The number of Negroes imported into the island [West Indies] and retained for its [England’s] consumption was more than double the number that existed there in 1817, and could scarcely have been less than 750,000 and certainly, at the most moderate estimate, not less than 700,000. If to these we were to add the children that must have been born on the Island in the long period of 178 years, and then reflect that all who remained for emancipation amounted to only 311,000 we should find ourselves forced to the conclusion that slavery was here attended with a destruction of life almost without a parallel in the history of a civilized nation.

If you want to understand America, it's slavery.

Brazil imported more enslaved Africans than any other American nation and was the last country in the hemisphere to abolish the institution, in 1888.

I came into my teens unaware that most Americans, blacks as well as whites, were ignorant of the main facts of Negro history. And so it was the facts of other histories that I found most intriguing. I fell into a U.S. history major by chance late in my second year at Fisk University.

We've yet to deal with the uncomfortable history of England being involved in the transatlantic slave trade, whereas America has at least made some movies dealing with its racial history.