Racial Freedom Quotes

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued 90 years ago. I believe in gradualism. But 90 years is gradual enough.

Jesus loves a free black man.

While this rebellion has emancipated a great many negroes, it has emancipated still more white men.

The contest is becoming—has become—one, not alone of freedom for the black, but freedom for the white.

Madam Walker, as part of the first generation out of slavery, really was inventing the way that she operated in the world.

In order for us, black and white, to disenthrall ourselves from the harshest slavemaster, racism, we must disinter our buried history.... We are all the Pilgrim, setting out on this journey.

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery.

Ali helped raise black people in this country out of mental slavery. The entire experience of being black changed for millions of people because of Ali.

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

When I come out of the box, I don't come out of the box as racial.

We must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free.

African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States, and excite in his bosom a lively, deep, decided and heart-felt interest.

In the Caribbean islands, especially in Jamaica, have I found a country similar to South Africa plus the racial freedom I had sought so long.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

This is a career about images. It's celluloid; they last for ever. I'm a black woman from America. My people were slaves in America, and even though we're free on paper and in law, I'm not going to allow you to enslave me on film, in celluloid, for all to see.

Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.

The Negro people of America... have cut our forests, tilled our fields, built our railroads, fought our battles, and in all of their trials they have manifested a simple faith, a grateful heart, a cheerful spirit, and an undivided loyalty. Now they have come to the place where their faith can no longer feed on the bread of repression and violence. They ask for the bread of liberty, of public equality, and public responsibility. It must not be denied them.

One of the key things for me about Madame Walker's life is that she really does represent this first generation out of slavery when black people were reinventing themselves, and as a woman who was the first child in her family born free, she was trying to figure out a way, and she moved from Delta, Louisiana.

Let it be said that when given a chance to complete the liberation of black Americans, on June 23, 2003 five justices consigned them to another generation - or, perhaps, a term of indefinite duration - of virtual enslavement to the past.

Perhaps in combat overseas, we [Blacks] would have more freedom and respect than we had experienced at home.

Until racial justice and freedom is a reality in this land, our union will remain profoundly imperfect.... The Negro is going to get justice or this society will be ripped apart.

In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.

The American people are not inclined to change their society in order to free the Negro. They are ready to undertake some, and perhaps major reforms, but not to make a revolution.

You take a look at the history of African Americans in the US. There's been about thirty years of relative freedom. There was a decade after the Civil War and before north/south compact essentially recriminalized black life. During the Second World War there was a need for free labor so there was a freeing up of the labor force. Blacks benefitted from it.

The only path of liberation for black people is that which leads toward complete and radical overthrow of the capitalist class.