Amiri Baraka Quotes

I grew up reading Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

I'd been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

'Malcolm X' was impressionable for me as a kid.

I don't remember when I didn't know about Martin Luther King.

At 16, I went to Smith College in Massachusetts and that was right after the peak of the civil-rights movement and all the rest. It was an era when students were making demands and many black students were closer to the teachings of Malcolm X, or what they thought were his teachings.

Martin Luther King has made the Negro in America unnatural.

The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to stand on a balcony without getting shot still maintains its power to awe and inspire.

I want to play Martin Luther King. That is absolutely a role and a character who is important to the landscape of the world that I really want to play.

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.

I realized that my grandfather walked with Martin Luther King forty years ago. That was his dream. And in his little way, he helped us get closer to where we are today.

Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero.

It's not painful to relive it. I'm comfortable with my position in American history.

Ali... we should have gone to see that movie. Malcolm X was another one.

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.

All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. King for his bravery and commitment to civil rights and nonviolence that changed this nation - and world - for the better.

I was a child when the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King occurred, and I wanted to hear what was going on. I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to contribute in the best way I possibly could.

Her continuity - you know, if you connect Harriet Tubman, who died in 1913, to Rosa Parks, born in 1913, you get this extraordinary spectrum of the African-American experience.

I was lucky, as many of my generation was, in having a man like Dr. King in our lives. He came at a time that we needed to take a long look at each other and see how similar we were.

We wouldn't be as far along as a country if we didn't take on some of Martin Luther King's ways that he instilled in us.

When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston, there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, Malcolm X was alive; great, great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.

You go through the Civil Rights struggle, everybody knew the songs - 'We shall overcome.' Everybody would sing it. Music helped us. James Brown, 'Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud.' They helped black people figure out how to navigate what was a very treacherous place in America for them.

If you blink, you will miss me, but I am in 'Malcolm X.'

In the Fifties, there were certain places we couldn't ride on the bus, and now there is a possibility of a black man being in the White House. You have to feel good about it.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement.