1. I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.
— Muhammad Ali The Greatest (1975)
2. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise, I rise, I rise.
— Maya Angelou “Still I rise,” And Still I Rise (1978)
3. Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.
— Arthur Ashe quoted in Sports Illustrated
4. Just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice.
— Ray Charles
5. The past is a ghost, the future a dream. All we ever have is now.
–– Bill Cosby
6. There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution…
— Frederick Douglass
7. You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
— Billie Holiday
8. Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.
— Quincy Jones
9. Do not call for Black power or green power. Call for brain power.
— Barbara Jordan
10. Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
–– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
11. The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself – the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us – that’s where it’s at.
— Jesse Owens, Blackthink (1970)
12. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminshes fear.
— Rosa Parks
13. Have a vision. Be demanding.
— Colin Powell
14. Be Black, shine, aim high.
— Leontyne Price
15. God gives nothing to those who keep their arms crossed.
— African Proverb
16. Freedom is never given; it is won.
— A. Philip Randolph in keynote speech given at the Second National Negro Congress in 1937
17. When I found I had crossed that line, [on her first escape from slavery, 1845] I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. — Harriet Tubman
18. Black people have always been America’s wilderness in search of a promised land.
– Cornel West, Race Matters
19. Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
— Booker T. Washington
20. Yes we can.
–– Barack Obama, 45th President of the United States
