Ayman Odeh Quotes

The black experience isn't exclusively slavery/civil rights/Obama.

The black masses want not to be shrunk from as though they are plague-ridden. They want not to be walled up in slums, in the ghettos, like animals. They want to live in an open, free society where they can walk with their heads up, like men, and women! Few white people realize that many black people today dislike and avoid spending more time than they must about white people. This 'integration' image, as it is popularly interpreted, has millions of vain, self-exalted white people convinced that black people want to sleep in bed with them - and that's a lie!

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

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.

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

I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.

The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.

If they had not murdered Malcolm X, there probably never would have been a Black Panther Party.

I identify... with the ideas that Malcolm X stood for.

My only crime was being born black - or being born black in Alabama.

When I began my political career, I identified with Malcolm X.

I have to be honest: I feel like I live in a constant state of rage, and I think a lot of black people do.

I am so proud to be black. I am, nevertheless, tired of the oppression. We need to develop and support a cohesive black agenda. We need to do what leaders have suggested since slavery. We need to recognize that while we are not monolithic, there is power in embracing a common agenda.

Black people, we are fully deserving of the room and space to fully express our humanity. This is what Black Lives Matter is truly about.

Malcolm X had a clear vision and an understanding that we were - that he was a part of a broad freedom struggle.

I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.

The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the '60s: Independent fire!

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.

The only thing I really feel is necessary is that the black people, not only in Mississippi, will have to actually upset this applecart. What I mean by that is, so many things are under the cover that will have to be swept out and shown to this whole world, not just to America. This thing they say of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is all on paper. It doesn't really mean anything to us. The only way we can make this thing a reality in America is to do all we can to destroy this system and bring this out to the light that has been under the cover all these years.

Malcolm X already envisioning the N.O.I. playing a role cooperatively with integrationist organizations.

We, the Black people of America, were chosen by Allah: Not to be "special" in the sense that we are better than others, but chosen because of the uniqueness of our position inside of America, and 460 years under slavery, neo-slavery, and injustice, to carry a message to the whole of humanity.

I mean it used to be, there was a time … when lynchings of African Americans were not that incredibly rare. Now the lynchings are the police and it's just an outrage.

So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.

The efforts of Black Lives Matter to bring attention to the all-too-frequent instances of unjustified violence being used by policemen may not be paying off as quickly as some might hope.

The goal of Martin Luther King is to get the Negroes to forgive the people the people who have brutalized them for four hundred years, by lulling them to sleep and making them forget what those whites have done to them, but the masses of black people today don't go for what Martin Luther King is putting down.