Ayanna Pressley Quotes

I think all in all, one thing a lot of plays seem to be saying is that we need to, as black Americans, to make a connection with our past in order to determine the kind of future we're going to have. In other words, we simply need to know who we are in relation to our historical presence in America.

All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.

You can't just say in one sentence what is blackness or what is black culture or what makes you who you are.

I read every one of the books on the shelf marked American Negro Literature. I became a nationalist, a colour nationalist, through the writings of men and women who lived a world away from me.

As Africans Americans we often think about the tragic stories associated with our lineage, but there are a lot of triumphs. Traveling helps you learn about other aspects of our history, like the story of Christ the Redeemer. It's empowering and inspiring.

I am proud of my black roots and of the black blood that runs in my veins.

I do consider myself part of black history.

In the imagination, Harlem will always be the spiritual capital of black excellence in America.

There's no question that I'm African-American. OK? I'm a black man. We're not going to escape that.

My mother introduced me to more academic-minded writers, Cornel West and Skip Gates. In her library, I came across, when I was very young, Harold Cruse's 'The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual,' which is like a bible of Negro intellectuals from Frederick Douglass to Amiri Baraka.

I'm a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film.

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

There is a distinctive African American culture that has roots in Africa and evolved on American soil.

Typically, there's this perspective among writers - and black writers: there's this idea that there is one person - and maybe beyond writers - among blacks, there is always one person who everyone should go to learn about all things black.

I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we've been here. I call it our 'sacred book.' What I've attempted to do is to mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.

I viewed black musicals before 'Jelly' as a form of cultural strip mining. The exterior remained, but all the culture that signified where the people had come from and their connection to the earth was absent.

I love being black.

Black History Month is a poignant time for the entire country, but particularly the African American community.

Slaves and the descendants of slaves created world pop culture. Let's keep it real and be very respectful about that.

To me, Harlem is one of the most important places on the earth, particularly when it comes to talking about African Americans.

Every February, we reflect on and honor the achievements, struggles, and icons that comprise Black history. As a proud, Black man running for office and raising two young, Black boys in the South, I am acutely aware that I stand on the shoulders of giants.

BET was a touchstone for me and a lot of my friends - it was a place you could go to see exactly what being black in 1992 and 1996 was like and what it was supposed to look like.

In all fields black consciousness seeks to talk to the black man in a language that is his own

When I was a teenager, black pride became newly popular again. Suddenly a lot of black people were wearing the fake kente cloth and red black and green and Bob Marley. That was sort of my window into finding my own identity as a black person.

The 22 million or 30 million, whatever the case may be, Afro-Americans in the United States were still Africans.