Black Lives Matter Quotes

“What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Most people write me off when they see me.
They do not know my story.
They say I am just an African.
They judge me before they get to know me.
What they do not know is
The pride I have in the blood that runs through my veins;
The pride I have in my rich culture and the history of my people;
The pride I have in my strong family ties and the deep connection to my community;
The pride I have in the African music, African art, and African dance;
The pride I have in my name and the meaning behind it.
Just as my name has meaning, I too will live my life with meaning.
So you think I am nothing?
Don’t worry about what I am now,
For what I will be, I am gradually becoming.
I will raise my head high wherever I go
Because of my African pride,
And nobody will take that away from me.”
― idowu koyenikan, Wealth for all Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams

“It’s also about Oscar.
Aiyana.
Trayvon.
Rekia.
Michael.
Eric.
Tamir.
John.
Ezell.
Sandra.
Freddie.
Alton.
Philando.
It’s even about that little boy in 1955 who nobody recognized at first—Emmett.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Children of Blood and Bone was written during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men, women, and children being shot by the police. I felt afraid and angry and helpless, but this book was the one thing that made me feel like I could do something about it. I told myself that if just one person could read it and have their hearts or minds changed, then I would've done something meaningful against a problem that often feels so much bigger than myself.”
― Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone

“...paradise is a world where everything
is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun...”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

“The Constitution gives you the right, as a white man, to have a rifle in your home. The Constitution gives you the right to protect yourself. Why is it ‘ominous’ when black people even talk of having rifles? Why don’t we have the right to self-defense? Is it because maybe you know we’re going to have to defend ourselves against you?”
― James Baldwin, One Day When I Was Lost

“Racists are snakes. Their minds are closed but their mouths are wide open, full of venom, ready to sting and destroy people around them.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“I understand we all have our differences. But while learning about history I've read about white people coming together, Jews coming together, Spanish coming together, different cultures and religions understanding and coming together despite their differences. Slavery was never something that shocked me. What shocks me is how black people have not yet overcome the odds and we're such strong smart people. Why we can't just stand together?”
― Jonathan Anthony Burkett

“If you believe in a cause, be willing to stand up for that cause with a million people or by yourself.”
― Otis S. Johnson, FROM "N" WORD TO MR. MAYOR

“I can't bring myself to watch yet another video, not because I don't care, but because we're all just a few videos away from becoming completely desensitized. The public execution of Black folks will never be normal.”
― Andrena Sawyer

“We all have a sphere of influence. Each of us needs to find our own sources of courage so that we can begin to speak. There are many problems to address, and we cannot avoid them indefinitely. We cannot continue to be silent. We must begin to speak, knowing that words alone are insufficient. But I have seen that meaningful dialogue can lead to effective action. Change is possible.”
― Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

“I'm not quite sure what freedom is, but i know damn well what it ain't. How have we gotten so silly, i wonder.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“I am angry. It is illegal for me to be angry. Remember: Don't get angry. It is illegal to be a black man and be angry. Right. Got it. I will remember this next time.”
― Kara Lee Corthron, The Truth of Right Now

“The fear of offense is a really small price to pay for freedom.”
― Andrena Sawyer

“A jail within a jail. In those long hours, he struggled over Reverend King's equation. "Throw us in jail and we will love you ... But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win our freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory." No he could not make that leap to love. He understood neither the impulse of the proposition nor the will to execute it.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“Resist when the world tries to convince you otherwise.”
― Nic Stone, Dear Justyce

“Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood

“Such was the short bitter life of Brother Tod Clifton. Now he's in this box with the bolts tightened down. He's in the box and we're in there with him, and when I've told you this you can go. It's dark in this box and it's crowded. It has a cracked ceiling and a clogged-up toilet in the hall. It has rats and roaches, and it's far, far too expensive a dwelling. The air is bad and it'll be cold this winter. Tod Clifton is crowded and he needs the room. 'Tell them to get out of the box', that's what he would say if you could hear him. 'Tell them to get out of the box and go teach the cops to forget that rhyme. Tell them to teach them that when they call you nigger to make a rhyme with trigger it makes the gun backfire.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“The world had whispered its rules to him for his whole life and he refused to listen, hearing instead a higher order. The world continued to instruct: do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change. He never listened, never saw what was plainly in front of him, and now he had been plucked from the world altogether. The only voices were those of the boys below, the shouts and laughter and fearful cries, as if he floated in a bitter heaven.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“HE remembered looking "agape" in his encyclopedia volume after he read Dr. King's speech in the DEFENDER. The newspaper ran the address in full after the reverend's appearance at Cornell College. If Elwood had come across the word before, through all those years of skipping around the book, it hadn't stuck in his head. King described "agape" as a divine love operating in the heart of man. A selfless love, an incandescent love, the highest there is. He called upon his Negro audience to cultivate that pure love for their oppressors, that it might carry them to the other side of the struggle.

Elwood tried to get his head around it, now that it was no longer the abstraction floating in his head last spring. It was real now.

"Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom.

The capacity to suffer. Elwood--all the Nickel boys--existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who destroyed them? To make that leap? "We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you."

Elwood shook his head. What a thing to ask. What an impossible thing.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“What if I make a mistake?' you may be thinking. 'Racism is a volatile issue, and I don't want to say or do the wrong thing.' In almost forty years of teaching and leading workshops about racism, I have made many mistakes. I have found that a sincere apology and a genuine desire to learn from one's mistakes is usually rewarded with forgiveness. If we wait for perfection, we will never break the silence. The cycle of racism will continue uninterrupted.”
― Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

“Here is a new musical phenomenon. Not songs written for black musicians by white composers. Not humiliating parodies that grope for a laugh, joking at the black singers' expense. Black composers and lyricists, black musicians excellent in their own right. Not merely excellent, but daring and vibrant and wholly original.”
― Julie Berry, Lovely War

“It is as if we have reentered the past and are living in a second Nadir: It seems the rate of police killings now surpasses the rate of lynchings during the worst decades of the Jim Crow era. There was a lynching every four days in the early decades of the twentieth century. It’s been estimated that an African American is now killed by police every two to three days.”
― Jesmyn Ward, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race

“The choices you have for your children are not the same as mine. For me, there is no such thing as a banned book. Ideas are meant to be explored, understood & learned from. My son will always be able to read any book. You can't regulate that.”
― Sara Ellie MacKenzie

“Quella mattina, come tutte le mattine, la prima decisione che prese riguardava la sua Nerezza. Aveva la pelle di un marrone scuro e uniforme. In pubblico, quando la gente poteva effettivamente vederlo, gli era impossibile anche solo avvicinarsi a un livello di Nerezza basso come 1,5. Se aveva la cravatta, le scarpe eleganti e un sorriso perenne in faccia, impostava la voce sul tono adatto agli ambienti chiusi e teneva le mani ferme e calme lungo i fianchi, poteva scendere al massimo a 4,0.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black

“dal momento che i bambini se ne stavano fondamentalmente a ciondolare lì davanti e non erano dentro la biblioteca a leggere come ci si può aspettare dai membri produttivi della società, era ragionevole che Dunn si fosse sentito minacciato da quei cinque giovani neri ed era dunque nel pieno dei suoi diritti quando aveva protetto sé stesso, i dvd presi in prestito dalla biblioteca e i suoi figli andando”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black

“My goal is not to replace white supremacy with colored supremacy, or christian supremacy with muslim supremacy, or blind faith with dispassionate logic, I am a stateless weaver of human plurality.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“The officer claimed he'd been scared, had reason to believe Philando was reaching for his gun. Show me that scenario. A man seated with a trunk full of melting groceries, wearing a thin layer of cotton, a little girl in the backseat. About to whip out his gun, shoot through the cop's bulletproof vest, to be his own getaway driver? Why would Philando shoot an innocent man withing forty seconds of meeting him? Why would the officer?”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“Now your people! Ya'll got a good reason to hate. All the wrongs been done to you and yours? A people who been whipped and beaten, hunted and hounded, suffered so grievously at their hands. You have every reason to despise them. To loathe them for centuries of depravations. That hate would be so pure, so sure and righteous - so strong!”
― P. Djèlí Clark, Ring Shout

“They like the places where we hurt. They use it against us.
The words of the girl, my other self from the dream place, strikes with sudden understanding. The places where we hurt. Where we hurt. Not just me, all of us, colored folk everywhere, who carry our wounds with us, sometimes open for all to see, but always so much more buried and hidden deep. I remember the songs that come with all those visions. Songs full of hurt. Songs full of sadness and tears. Songs pulsing with pain. A righteous anger and cry for justice.
But not hate.
They ain't the same thing. Never was. These monsters want to pervert that. Turn it to their own ends. Because that's what they do. Twist you all up so that you forget yourself. Make you into something like them. Only I can't forget, because all those memories always with me, showing me the way.”
― P. Djèlí Clark, Ring Shout