Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination.

Whatever good I have accomplished as an actress I believe came in direct proportion to my efforts to portray black women who have made positive contributions to my heritage.

If each person in this world will simply take a small piece of this huge thing, this amazing quilt, and work it regardless of the color of the yarn, we will have harmony on this planet.

I am not a quitter. I will fight until I drop. It is just a matter of having some faith in the fact that as long as you are able to draw breath in the universe, you have a chance.

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch - what make you go beyond the norm.

The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are. Nobody would bother to beat you down if you were not a threat.

If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do.

The author takes the position that the consumer pays the tax, and as such every individual of the social order should be given unlimited opportunity to make the most of himself.

The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there.

Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority.

And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.

If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own.

Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?

The different ness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess.

I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me.

Truth comes to us from the past, then, like gold washed down from the mountains.

The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people.