Probably best, he thought. If a Negro got legs he ought to…

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

— Anonymous

It was impossible to reason with a negro-that the only way to keep him in his place was to keep him under fear.

— Henry Carter Stuart

Any negro who occupies a position that was given to him by the white man, if you analyze his function, his function never enables…

— Malcolm X

“...internalized the Negro theorem of needing to be twice as good to get half as far.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“In the beginning—and neither can this be overstated—a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not…

— James Baldwin

“I remember the first time I ever saw you, the day you came. L.J. and I were so excited about this new person that…

— A.G. Graham

One Negro meeting another at an all-white cocktail party cannot but wonder how the other got there. The question is: Is he for real?…

— Michael Salu

It was not my aim to paint about the Negro in America in terms of propaganda. It is to depict the life of my…

— Romare Bearden

In disposition the Negro is joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race present a singular diversity of intellectual character,…

— Samuel George Morton

“You speak as if God was white and Southern! As if we somehow owned his image. You speak like a fool. The Negro is…

— Sue Monk Kidd

The Negro's so-called 'revolt' is merely an asking to be accepted into the existing system!

— Malcolm X

“In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to look back;…

— James Baldwin

Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen…

— W. E. B. Du Bois

Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but in the fact that the doer…

— Zora Neale Hurston

The Negro fought and bled and died in every war the white man waged, and he still won't give you justice. You nursed his…

— Malcolm X