Quotes from African Americans

 “People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”

James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Nobody Knows My Name (1961)

  “If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything... that smacks of discrimination or slander.”

                Mary McLeod Bethune(1875-1955)
"Certain Unalienable Rights," What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan (1944)

“There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.”

                                                    Ernest J. Gaines (1933-)
                                     interview with John O'Brien in African American Writers (1991)