W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve,and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and American humanity.

In 2016, the conversation of the black experience is so broad, and it's very raw. I mean, c'mon, we have a black president. That's a major thing, and there are so many other significant occurrences that have come from the '60s and '70s up to now.

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.

Black Power alone is no more insurance against social injustice than white power.

Aspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.

There was a resistance movement in the white community, and there was a determined civil rights movement by our neighbors and friends in the African-American community. They had right on their side. They conducted themselves in high standards, with courage and determination, and they were victorious. They overcame.

What the white man in America needs to realize is there's a new thinking among black people today which makes them not willing to sit around and wait for five years to get this problem solved, much less a hundred years.

My number one priority is to save the Black man.

The world has made being black a crime .... I hope to make it a virtue.

I want to live to help my race.

[James] Baldwin said the real question is not when there will be the first Negro president in this country. The important question is what country he's going to be the president of.

I said, "If I was a Negro girl-" He placed his fingers across my lips so I tasted his saltiness. "We can't think of changing our skin," he said. "Change the world-that's how we gotta think."

Black Americans are the only people in history who are for education instead of liberation. George Washington wasn't beating up on British for the right to open a college! The line isn't "Give me education or give me death."

We're primarily interested in solving the problem of 20 million black people. And if integration is going to solve the problem tomorrow, then let's integrate. But since the Supreme Court issued its desegregation decision seven years ago, and you only have about six or seven percent integration now, on an educational level, that means that the black man trying to use integration as a means of solving his problem will be another 100 years just getting integration on an educational level.

I think "post-racial" is a dangerous trap. You can fall into complacency and give your complicity a much more dangerous character.

There is a magnificent new militancy within the Negro community all across this nation. And I welcome this as a marvelous development. The Negro of America is saying he's determined to be free and he is militant enough to stand up.

Martin Luther King has made the Negro in America unnatural.

I want to be identified with the negro; until he gets his rights, we shall never have ours.

Here you have 22 million Afro-Americans, black people today, catching more hell than Patrick Henry ever saw. And I'm here to tell you, in case you don't know it, that you got a new - you got a new generation of black people in this country, who don't care anything whatsoever about odds. They don't want to hear you old Uncle Tom handkerchief heads talking about the odds.

At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.

The black people's struggle has vanquished racism. It was God who created colour. Today Obama, a son of Kenya, a son of Africa, has made it in the United States of America.

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.

We must realise that prophetic cry of black students: Black man you are on your own!

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.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.