Culture Quote by A'Lelia Bundles

“Once upon a time, we were Africans involved in a unique lexicon of beliefs, lore, stories, and customs that were designed to help integrate…

— Stephanie Rose Bird

I remember 'Roots' growing up and the cultural impact it had on the country. Watching 'Roots' was not the cool remove of reading about…

— John Ridley

You get a sense that it's okay to have good stuff and still claim a relationship with God. So enslaved Africans rethought their predicament…

— Anthony B Pinn

Suffice it to say, during the whole long day I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped…

— Solomon Northup

We understand 'Roots,' and that experience was mind-boggling, and it changed the way society viewed race relations. It was incredibly important. With 'Roots,' I…

— Esai Morales

I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across…

— Anonymous

“When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but no one…

— Colson Whitehead

There is a mythic view of the South that's symbolized by the film "Gone With The Wind" that looks back fondly at slavery as…

— William R. Ferris

“By the middle of the eighteenth century the black slave had sunk, with hushed murmurs, to his place at the bottom of a new…

— W.E.B. Du Bois

“In addition, the most reliable and recent studies of African tribal culture demonstrated that slavery was a long-standing custom among the Africans themselves, so…

— Joseph J. Ellis

“Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the…

— Upton Sinclair

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should…

— Henry Louis Gates