Common Quote by Paul Robeson

As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.

— James Weldon Johnson

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about…

— Countee Cullen

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.

— Archie Shepp

Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.

— Archie Shepp

Growing up in the South, I was raised to be a Negro boy. I was acutely aware how other people perceived me, and that…

— George C. Wolfe

I can only tell you that when long soul-searching and a combination of circumstances delivered me of my last prejudices, there was an exalted…

— Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know…

— James A. Baldwin

I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people…

— Bernice Johnson Reagon

The Negro is the child of two cultures - Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many…

— Martin Luther King, Jr

You have, you can only answer it this way: by turning it around. Can the negro - who is the victim of the system…

— Malcolm X

As a black artist in America, you know, it is so segregated as far as the radio goes and how they position music on…

— Kelis

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.

— Lord Acton