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Quotes about race

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We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country. … We are here, and here we are likely to be.
Frederick Douglass1817–1895“The Destiny of Colored Americans”, The North Star (16 November 1849)
- America
We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go on with this people, either as a testimony against them, or as an evidence in their favor throughout their generations.
Frederick Douglass1817–1895“The Destiny of Colored Americans”, The North Star (16 November 1849)
- America
To have given each one of the million Negro free families a forty-acre freehold would have made a basis of real democracy in the United States that might easily have transformed the modern world.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 602
- Democracy
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. VI: “Of the Training of Black Men”In context
- Reading
The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963The Souls of Black Folk (1903), The ForethoughtIn context
- History
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Chapter IIn context
- Money
The famous dictum which states that all men are equal will find its illustration in the colonies only when the colonized subject states he is equal to the colonist.
Frantz Fanon1925–1961The Wretched of the Earth (1961), p. 9
- Justice
The Church in the colonies is a white man’s Church, a foreigners’ Church. It does not call the colonized to the ways of God, but to the ways of the white man, to the ways of the master, the ways of the oppressor.
Frantz Fanon1925–1961The Wretched of the Earth (1961), p. 7
- Anti-Religion
Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the talisman of liberty.
James A. Garfield1831–1881Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)
- Voting
We have seen the white men betray the flag and fight to kill the Union; but in all that long, dreary war we never saw a traitor in a black skin.
James A. Garfield1831–1881Speech to the ‘Boys in Blue’ (1880)
- War & Peace
Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Sixth State of the Union Address (1874)
- Voting
I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885To Isaac N. Morris (1868), as quoted in The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: July 1, 1868–October 31, 1869, by Ulysses S. Grant, p. 37
The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen. Yet he is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong, and should be corrected.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Second Inaugural Address (1873)
- Slavery
The present difficulty, in bringing all parts of the United States to a happy unity and love of country grows out of the prejudice to color. The prejudice is a senseless one, but it exists.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Memorandum: Reasons why Santo Domingo should be annexed to the United States (1869-1870?)
- America
White Americans desire to be free of a past they do not want to remember, while Black Americans remain bound to a past they can never forget.
Nikole Hannah-Jonesborn 1976The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (2021)
- History