African American Education Quotes

In the early 1970s in Atlanta, I attended what had formerly been an all-white school but had become a black school after integration and white flight. Perhaps because of this, the teachers created a curriculum that included a focus on African American literature and history year-round, not just in February.

In the hands of the Negro teacher rests the destiny of the race.

The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges.

I grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina, which has the proud distinction of being the home to two of the eight Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the state: South Carolina State University and Claflin University. When I was a kid riding around town with my grandfather, we often drove by the colleges.

I went to Dunbar High School, recognized as the best high school of the segregated era. The education enabled students from Dunbar to attend the best colleges and universities in the country.

I went to what is known as, and was at that time, too, Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. In fact, because of the lack of public school facilities, I began there. I began boarding school at the high school level; in fact, a year below the high school level.

There was a different, visionary team commitment that guided the black community at the beginning of the 20th century, best envisioned by educator, entrepreneur, and founder of Tuskegee University Booker T. Washington.

Talk to any black person in my age group, and they'll say 'A Different World' is why they went to college. The show literally changed my life, and it boggles my mind that it doesn't get the kind of love it deserves.

Amiri Baraka went to Howard. Lucille Clifton went to Howard. Ossie Davis went to Howard. And I was aware of that when I was there. Charles Drew went to Howard. Thurgood Marshall went to the law school. Being aware of that and having all of that brought to bear, again, it's one of those things that I can't really separate from my career as a writer.

The commitment to literacy was constant on the part of African Americans. And the percentages of literacy by the end of the century, by 1900, basic literacy has galloped ahead. People believed that education, of course, was the turnstile for advancement.

I do not inveigh against higher education, I simply maintain that the sort of education the colored people of the South stand most in need of, is elementary and industrial. They should be instructed for the work to be done.

They call Howard University the 'capstone of black education.' Howard was one of the historically black colleges where people want to go and send their children. Both of my grandfathers went through the medical school, and being in D.C., not far from New York City, it was a natural choice for me.

I went to an historically black college where we're always told that there's limitation. And so I'm happy to represent for black colleges.

These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like the bettering the condition of my race

I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

I went to a historically black college.

The Jewish culture has a wonderful thing about education. It has a great thing about family; it has a great thing about unity, hard work, dedication. I would like to say the African-American community should emulate that.

It it weren't for HBCUs, 'A Different World' wouldn't exist.

HBCUs have been a bedrock of the Black community since their founding, evolving into institutions of prodigious scholarship and activism, and educating African-Americans nationwide.

What got me motivated was my dad's idea that I go to Morehouse College in Atlanta. It's an all-black, all-male school. Martin Luther King went there. The most famous person in my class was Spike Lee. And I really caught fire. I was so inspired by the people around me that I went from C's and D's to straight A's by the time I left.

We need our HBCUs. The youth need our HBCUs. The elders need our HBCUs.

Historically black colleges and universities are incredibly important institutions woven into the fabric of America. They have played such an important role in achieving progress for African Americans and in our nation's march for justice.

In fact, the Harvard study data indicates that 70 percent of African American children attend schools that are predominately African American, about the same level as in 1968 when Dr. King died.

Typically, historical black colleges and universities like Delaware State, attracted students who were raised in an environment where going to college wasn't the next natural step after high school.