Ella Harris > Ella's Quotes

“And this is for Colored girls who have considered suicide, but are moving to the ends of their own rainbows.”
― Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf

“i found god in myself
and i loved her
i loved her fiercely”
― Ntozake Shange

“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler

“          The Self must create           Its own reasons for being.           To shape God,           Shape Self.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“God is neither good nor evil, neither loving nor hating. God is Power. God is Change. We must find the rest of what we need within ourselves, in one another, in our Destiny.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“The single most compelling aspect of black women's writing today is its ability to envision transformed human social relationships and the alternative futures these might shape.”
― Susan Willis, Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience

“Black studies require a complete reorganization of the intellectual life and historical outlook of the United States, and world civilization as a whole. That is what the impact of black studies means.”
― CLR James

“You cannot have a non-political African American Studies course because its whole invention, its raison d’être came out of political struggle.”
― Robin D.G. Kelley

“I think one of the most radical things that anyone in this world can do is imagine that Black people have a future.”
― N.K. Jemisin

“the law is never enough to uphold (or overthrow) unjust systems.”
― Ruha Benjamin, Imagination: A Manifesto

“The bridge I must be

Is the bridge to my own power”
― Kate Rushin, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

“In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. This means that we are going to have to learn to think in radical terms. I use the term radical in its original meaning—getting down to and understanding the root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system.”
― Ella Baker

“Strong people don't need strong leaders.”
― Ella Baker

“Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.”
― Ella Baker

“This may only be a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real.

Ella Baker to Anne Braden, Mar. 21, 1960, SCLC Papers, box 32, folder 18”
― Ella Baker

“This may only be a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real.”
― Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

“So often, the boys would all stand under a lamppost "doo-wopping." Everybody wanted to sing. Everybody wanted to sing lead. Nobody could get it just right. It was the only time they were not in harmony. But this was the fifties, and music was in the air. It was everywhere. For this group of boys standing under a curbside spotlight, the music was off-key, it was out of sync, it was perfect. The grace note of their young lives.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America

“Two months ago I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, ‘That’s their business, not mine.’ Now I know how wrong I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of all of us”
― Mamie Till-Mobley

“As a Black feminist, I know that I can’t “lean in” to a democracy that was built on a bridge called my back.”
― Duchess Harris, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump

“I am not a postfeminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.”
― Rebecca Walker

“in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance”
― Phyllis Wheatley

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.”
― Maya Angelou

“When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.”
― Pauli Murray

“Only the Black woman can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.”
― Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South

“The Freedom Gates are half-ajar. We must pry them fully open.”
― Mary McLeod Bethune

“I will not shrink from undertaking what seems wise and good, because I labor under the double handicap of race and sex; but, striving to preserve a calm mind with a courageous, cheerful spirit, barring bitterness from my heart, I will struggle all the more earnestly to reach the goal.”
― Mary Church Terrell