Embrace Quote by Alice Walker

One of the key things for me about Madame Walker's life is that she really does represent this first generation out of slavery when…

— A'Lelia Bundles

I carry in my datebook a piece of paper that my mother copied out for me, from the 1840 Census. Hardy Callaway Culver of…

— Laura Lippman

“Mr. Johnson had just been reading the "Lady of the Lake," and at once suggested that my name be "Douglass." From that time until…

— Frederick Douglass

Please remember that my great grandmother was a slave. My grandmother was a sharecropper. My mother was a factory worker.

— Afeni Shakur

Madam Walker, as part of the first generation out of slavery, really was inventing the way that she operated in the world.

— A'Lelia Bundles

Madam C.J. Walker was born in 1867, two years after the civil war ended. She was a daughter of a slave. She had no…

— A'Lelia Bundles

My mother's last name, maiden name is Hogue. She is Cherokee and African. My grandfather, Dave Hogue, owned 300 acres of land in Marion,…

— Mathew Knowles

Our foreparents were mostly brought from West Africa. We were brought to America and our foreparents were sold; white people bo ught them; white…

— Fannie Lou Hamer

I am a descendant of slaves. My great grandmother Mary Thomas, born in 1865, was the child of a slave. That is just three…

— Linda Thomas-Greenfield

I was named after my mother's maiden name.

— Sprague Grayden

My father didn't know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather, and his grandfather got it from his grandfather…

— Malcolm X

My mother, twenty-two, was Harriet Gautier Brooks, named for her paternal grandmother, but always called Hallie. My father, twenty-six, was Albert Horton Foote, named…

— Horton Foote