Gregory Stanton

“Perhaps because the bank was identified with the endeavors of the newly freed negro, wrote historians Kindsor and Sagarin, anyone who dared to raise a cry against the mismanagement was charged with being anti-negro. In as much as the enemies of the negro were not interested in the bank, and the friends were effectively silenced with the anti-negro charge, there was no exposure of the condition of the bank. The belief that the failures of black institutions could not be accurately studied because of the sensitivity of the race issue, whether accurate or not, would be a recurring theme through history.”
― Mehrsa Baradaran, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

“When political strategists argue that the Republican Party is missing a huge chance to court the black community, they are thinking of this mostly male bloc—the old guy in the barbershop, the grizzled Pop Warner coach, the retired Vietnam vet, the drunk uncle at the family reunion. He votes Democratic, not out of any love for abortion rights or progressive taxation, but because he feels—in fact, he knows—that the modern-day GOP draws on the support of people who hate him.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“It's important for us to know where we come from and what's been done to us, otherwise, how're we supposed to fight what's happening to us now? It's all connected.”
― Daven McQueen, The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones

“No matter how many times my dad urged me to reach for the stars, my understanding of the universe was still confined by the world' limited notion of what a Black country girl from the South could do or who she could become.”
― Brittany K. Barnett, A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom