Black History Month Quotes

“History, too, has a penchant for giving birth
to itself over and over again, and those whom it
appoints agents of change and progress
do not always accept their destinies willingly.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Be perfectly okay with being who YOU are. Fully embrace yourself, flaws and all. Love yourself right where you are. Strive to do better, but don’t beat yourself up for every shortcoming that you may have. Be brave in your journey! Hold your head up high, and keep moving forward.”
― Stephanie Lahart

“Any ministry to black people which is not designed to effect their empowerment is designed to perpetuate their enslavement.”
― Albert B. Cleage,Jr., Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church

“The leaders and followers of the Harlem Renaissance were every bit as intent on using Black culture to help make the United States a more functional democracy as they were on employing Black culture to 'vindicate' Black people.”
― Aberjhani, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

“Those Garveyites I knew could never understand why I liked them but would never follow them, and I pitied them too much to tell them that they could never achieve their goal, that Africa was owned by the imperial powers of Europe, that their lives were alien to the mores of the natives of Africa, that they were people of the West and would for ever be so until they either merged with the West or perished.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“When female stories are muted, we are teaching our kids that their dignity is second class and the historical accounts of their lives [are] less relevant. This lowered value carries over when women face sexual objectification and systemic brutalization from inside and outside the community.”
― Aurin Squire

“Historical exclusivity often has a way of turning into present and institutionalized tragedy. Whose story gets told matters.”
― Aurin Squire

“Sandra L. West and Aberjhani have compiled an encyclopedia that makes an important contribution to our need to know more about one of modern America’s truly significant artistic and cultural movements. It helps us to acknowledge the complexity of African American life at a time when the nation’s culture was taking on a recognizable shape, when race was becoming less of a crushing burden and more of a challenge to progressive people and their ideals, and when cities and their inhabitants symbolized the end of the past and the seductiveness of the new.”
― Clement Alexander Price, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

“Whether we consider hip-hop as an evolved manifestation of the Harlem Renaissance or something completely new under the sun, it clearly has moved beyond the stage of just entertaining lives to that of informing and empowering lives.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“There are hundreds of political prisoners right now in America’s jails who were so taken by Malcolm [X’s} spirit that they became warriors and the powers that be understood them as warriors. They knew that a lot of these other middle-class [black] leaders were not warriors; they were professionals; they were careerists. But these warriors had callings, and they have paid an incalculable and immeasurable price in those cells.”
― Cornel West, Black Prophetic Fire

“I have my own religion. My conception of religion is being to the other fellow what you would like for him to be to you and do what you think is necessary to be the type of man that God could appreciate.”
― Frank Calvin Mann

“Many years later, people would forget about the quiet successes of everyday people like Ida Mae. In the debates to come over welfare and pathology, American would overlook people like her in its fixation with the underclass, just as a teacher can get distracted by the two or three problem children at the expense of the quiet, obedient ones. Few experts trained their sights on the unseen masses of migrants like her, who worked from the moment they arrived, didn’t end up on welfare, stayed married because that’s what God-fearing people of their generation did whether they were happy or not, and managed not to get strung out on drugs or whiskey or a cast of nameless, no-count men.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

“Historical omission points toward a culture’s subconscious beliefs that some people matter less than others.”
― Aurin Squire

“Nia learned that our self-identity and connection to our roots is so powerful it can impact not only the course of our lives but also that of generations to come.”
― Jenny Delacruz, Fridays With Ms. Mélange