Would America have been America without her Negro people?

The Negro people of America... have cut our forests, tilled our fields, built our railroads, fought our battles, and in all of their trials…

— Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation-we have fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood…

— W. E. B. Du Bois

America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'

— Martin Luther King, Jr

You know, if ever there was a people who should know how to practice brotherhood, it is the American Negro and it is the…

— Malcolm X

It is over one hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The Negro people in the United States have taken plenty and they have…

— C. L. R. James

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good…

— Anonymous

The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror.

— Langston Hughes

Very early in life, it seemed to me that there was a relationship between the problems of the Negro people in America and the…

— Langston Hughes

Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid…

— Martin Luther King, Jr

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a…

— W. E. B. Du Bois

The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first…

— W. E. B. Du Bois

The Negro was freed and turned loose as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant laborer. Ninety-nine per cent were field hands and servants of the…

— W. E. B. Du Bois

The most ordinary Negro is a distinct gentleman, but it takes extraordinary training and opportunity to make the average white man anything but a…

— W. E. B. Du Bois

An American, a Negro... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it…

— W. E. B. Du Bois

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