Malcolm X Quotes

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

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

Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery. And I'm sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa. I'm a black man in America.

I do consider myself part of black history.

There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.

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

I wanted to explore black culture, and I wanted that culture to be a revelation.

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

As much as I'm a black person from America, I'm a black person from Africa, too.

As a child, I experienced black culture as many people did in America: on the TV, radio, and stages.

What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.

My composition often goes toward the black middle class or the black super-wealthy or strong historical black figures.

The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in Africa.

Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off.

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.

My own thinking has evolved. You find Africanisms in American speech. You find an African influence on United States culture. There are all kinds of Africanisms in America, as you would expect, if you really thought about it... That whole thing is much broader; the influence is much broader than I first understood.

My biggest inspiration is black America and what they've done in the arts. I have always felt like an outsider in America, and what black Americans have done to add their chapter to this book called the American dream, and to be so unapologetic and true, and have added so much to art and culture in the world.

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.

My knowledge of my ancestry, like a lot of black people not living in Africa today, is very vague.

I didn't learn black history in school. I had to go find Malcolm X books.

There is no monolithic black culture. It's completely different for someone born in Harlem to someone born in Houston or London with one exception, which is that people contributing to black culture have the experience of 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.