Gregory Stanton

“But I am really saying something very simple. The will of the people, or the state, is revealed by the state's institutions. There was not, then, nor is there, now, a single American institution, which is not a racist institution. And racist institutions - the unions, for one example, the Church, for another, and the Army - or the military - for yet another, are meant to keep the nigger in his place. Yes: we have lived through tokens and concessions but white power remains white. And what it appears to surrender with one hand it obsessively clutches in the other.”
― James Baldwin, Dark Days

“Anybody, no matter who they were, could come right off the boat and get more rights and respect than amerikan-born Blacks.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“Next week is Negro History Week," said Simple. "And how much Negro history do you know?"

"Why should I know Negro history?" I replied. "I am an American."

"But you are also a black man," said Simple, "and you did not come over on the Mayflower—at least, not the same Mayflower as the rest."

"What rest?" I asked.

"The rest who make up the most," said Simple, "then write the history books and leave us out, or else put in the books nothing but prize fighters and ballplayers. Some folks think Negro history begins and ends with Jackie Robinson."

"Not quite," I said.

"Not quite is right," said Simple. "Before Jackie there was Du Bois and before him there was Booker T. Washington, and before him was Frederick Douglass and before Douglass the original Freedom Walker, Harriet Tubman, who were a lady. Before her was them great Freedom Fighters who started rebellions in the South long before the Civil War. By name they was Gabriel and Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey."

"When, how, and where did you get all that information at once?" I asked.

"From my wife, Joyce," said Simple. "Joyce is a fiend for history. She belongs to the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Also Joyce went to school down South. There colored teachers teach children about our history. It is not like up North where almost no teachers teach children anything about themselves and who they is and where they come from out of our great black past which were Africa in the old days.”
― Langston Hughes, The Return of Simple

“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