Cheri L. Mills

“While it is totally impossible for Whites to know the pressure of being Black in a world in which Whites define normality—and based on that definition, Blacks are abnormal in all things and in all ways—it is critical that Whites see Black suffering and pain as reality before Whites can enter into their pain.”
― Cheri L. Mills, Lent of Liberation: Confronting the Legacy of American Slavery

“Frederick Douglass wrote of this hypocrisy in his autobiography: Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest, possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.”
― Cheri L. Mills, Lent of Liberation: Confronting the Legacy of American Slavery