The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, ch.34

At the root of the American Negro problem is the necessity of the American white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to be able to live with himself.

-Baldwin,James Arthur
  'Stranger in a Village', in Harper's, Oct.

I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simplyat themercyofthereflexesthecolorofone'sskincaused in other people.

-Baldwin,James Arthur
  Notes of a Native Son,'Notes of a Native Son'.

Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.

-Davis, Sammy,Jnr
  Yes I Can, pt.3, ch.23.

This would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a negro, and be hanged for it.

-Freeman, Edward Augustus
Of  America. Letter to F H Dickinson from New Haven, 4 Dec.

Asthe friend of the negro assumes that one man cannot, by right, hold another in bondage, should the friend of woman assume that man cannot, by right, lay even well- meant restrictions on woman.

-Fuller, (Sarah) Margaret, Marchioness Ossoli
  'The Great Lawsuit', in Dial, vol.4,  Jul.

To Walden the saxophone was, at once, his key to the world in which he found himself, and the way by which that world was rendered impotent to brand him either a failure or madman or Negro or saint.

-Holmes,John Clellon
  The Horn,'Chorus:  Walden'.

'It's powerful,' he said. 'What?' 'That one drop of Negro bloodöbecause just one drop of black blood makes a man coloured. One dropöyou are a Negro!'

-Hughes, (James Mercer) Langston
  Simple Takes a Wife.

If the United States is indeed the great melting pot, the negro either didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

-Marshall,Thurgood
  In the NewYork Times, 9 Sep.

Of historyand its consequences it may be said: 'Those who can, gloat; those who can't, brood.' Englishmen are born gloaters; Irishmen born brooders. There are, it is true, brooders who take to gloating, and they did much to build the Empire.Yet the brooder-gloater, such as the Irishman turned Englishman, is not, as a human type, altogether a success. He is a little too much on his guard, like an excessivelyassimilated Jew, or a son of Harlem who has decided to'pass'. The past of the Irishman, the Jew, the Negro, is, psychologically, too explosive to be buried.

-Cruise
  To Katanga and Back: a UN case history.

Some doubt the courage of the Negro.Go to Haiti and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they thinkof the Negro's sword.

-Phillips,Wendell
Address onToussaint l'Ouverture, referring to theWar of Haitian Independence,1804.

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humour, its music.How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

-Rollins, Sonny (TheodoreWalter)
  Statement on sleeve of Freedom Suite.

Night, with all her negro train, Took possession of the plain; In an hearse she rode reclined, Drawn by screech-owls slow and blind: Close to her, with printless feet, Crept Stillness, in a winding sheet.

-Smart, Christopher
  'A Night-Piece; or, Modern Philosophy', stanza 2. In the London Magazine, no.14, Dec. Collected in Poems on Several Occasions (1752).