African American Core Values: A Guide for Everyone pot

What Others are Saying about African American Core Values: A Guide for Everyone
"In what has obviously been a labor of love, Richard Rosenfield compiles a useful
compendium of folk wisdom which, while coming out of the African American
community, is of profound relevance to all Americans. Reaching across the generations
and spanning the range from academic to popular discourses, Rosenfield reproduces here
one nugget of insight after the other. All of our young people need to read and reflect
upon this invaluable book."
GLENN C. LOURY, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences in the
Department of Economics at Brown University, and author of Race,
Incarceration, and American Values
"It was a great idea to edit such a book, and a major contribution."
JAMES P. COMER, Founder and Chairman of the School Development
Program at the Yale University School of Medicine's Child Study Center, and
author of What I Learned In School: Reflections on Race, Child Development,
and School Reform
African American Core Values: A Guide for Everyone serves as a poignant collection of
hard-fought common sense values that every American no matter their color can
benefit from. The values of self-reliance, hard work, education, and the willingness to
endure to overcome obstacles were once common in the black community. It is books
such as this one that can help bring these values back."
REVEREND JESSE LEE PETERSON, Founder and President of
Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, and author of From Rage to
Responsibility: Black Conservative Jesse Lee Peterson and America Today
"I was struck by the academic possibilities of this compilation. Educators, counselors and
scholars would find it very useful. Having these ideas collected in one place and
accessible would be very convenient for those who are speaking to, or working with,
young people."
JOHNNETTA B. COLE, Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of
African Art, President Emerita of Spelman and Bennett Colleges, Chair of the
JBC Institute, and author of Gender Talk: The Struggle For Women's Equality in
African American Communities

A great piece of work. Every student, of every color, should read this. It should be part of
the social studies curriculum."
ANDREW D. WASHTON, author of What Happens Next? Stories to Finish
for Intermediate Writers, Teachers College Press, Columbia University
African American Core Values
A Guide for Everyone
Compiled by
Richard M. Rosenfield
Published by Richard M. Rosenfield at Smashwords
AFRICAN AMERICAN CORE VALUES: A GUIDE FOR EVERYONE
Copyright 2012 by Richard M. Rosenfield
Smashwords Edition
Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author,
and may not be reproduced, copied, or distributed for commercial or non-commercial
purposes. If you enjoy it, please encourage your friends to acquire their own copy of the
ebook or print edition. Thank you for your support.
All author royalties from this edition will be donated to a nonprofit organization.
To the memory of my parents,
Samuel and Sylvia,
and to
Yael and Sam
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on the Ebook Edition
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Background
Chapter 1: Oppression
Chapter 2: Opportunity
Chapter 3: Self-Reliance

Part II: Core Values
Chapter 4: Marriage
Chapter 5: Education
Chapter 6: Work
Part III: Obstacles
Chapter 7: Crime
Chapter 8: Conformity
Chapter 9: Passivity
Biographical Notes
About the Author
Notes
Acknowledgments
I appreciate all the library workers who made it possible for me to find books, especially
in the system of the New York Public Library.
Many friends have supported my efforts by giving me articles and books, criticizing
sections of the manuscript, and simply by asking how it was going. I thank all of you,
especially Ansell, Bernie, John, Jules, Maximo, Andrea and Paul.
Years before publication I was lucky to receive feedback from Anne C. Beal, Johnnetta
B. Cole, Abigail Thernstrom, and Faye Wattleton. Although these authors did not know
me, they graciously responded to my request for their opinions. Their encouragement
meant more to me than they could have known.
Most helpful of all was the patience, feedback, encouragement, and love I received from
Yael and Sam.
Note on the Ebook Edition
I submitted the final text of the print edition of African American Core Values to the
publisher before recognizing that our national economy was seriously troubled.
Considering the current hard economic times, sections in that edition, about African
American economic progress, may impress some readers as overly positive. To me, the
message of the first edition remains valid: the core values that enabled African
Americans to advance, under conditions much worse than those seen today, continue to

foster well-being and progress, for everyone. The wisdom in African American literature
is timeless. Consequently, this edition has only a few minor changes.
This ebook does not contain the Name Index or citations for the quotes. Please see the
print edition for that information.
Preface
Working as a school psychologist for thirty years, from rural North Carolina to New
York City, I saw many achieving African American students who clearly would succeed
in the workplace. But I was more concerned with those who were not performing well
and were vulnerable to remaining poor throughout their lives. News reports suggested
that most African Americans were poor. The media implied that the solution was for
government officials to start programs and stop the discrimination in our country. This
viewpoint left ordinary people such as my students and most adults with no direction,
nothing to do.
Jewell Jackson McCabe
Here we are in the twenty-first century, with no generational plan for the cultural
equity and creation of wealth that we are committed to.
Nathan McCall, on middle-class black people who want to help:
Like me, they feel frustrated and so overwhelmed by the complex web of
problems facing African Americans that they don’t know where to begin.
I searched for answers in books by African Americans. They wrote that they were
making much more economic progress than the media indicated. They identified a set of
three core values that contributed to their success: marriage, education, and work. These
writers convinced me that if more young people believed in and lived by those values,
more would avoid poverty and achieve well-being, and the movement to economic
equality would broaden and accelerate.
But in many homes, those values were not fully recognized or passed on. Most of the
parents I worked with were single mothers, grandparents, older sisters, foster parents,
aunts, and uncles. Many were spending all their time and energy just keeping a roof over
everyone’s head and keeping their kids fed, clothed, in school, and out of trouble. They
tried their best to instill wholesome values, but it’s a difficult job. They often were not as

effective as they wanted to be.
African American Core Values is a resource for black youth and the people who raise,
teach, and influence them. It is a compilation of focused self-help quotations from
approximately two hundred years of African American writing and speaking. It guides
young people, affirms their efforts, and warns of potential obstacles. It also takes them
through a major part of American history in the authentic, poignant voices of those who
experienced and shaped that history.
People other than African Americans can also benefit from these quotations. Young
people of all races experience many of the same challenges. The insights in black
literature can help all teens and young adults avoid problems in life and take advantage of
opportunities.
Adults of all races can benefit as well. A theme that runs through the literature is that
African Americans feel misunderstood, misperceived. Shelby Steele wrote of "white
blindness." Ralph Ellison’s protagonist thought, "I am invisible….they see only my
surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and
anything except me." Miles Davis reacted to misperceptions by suggesting that white
people "read a book and learn something." I read and learned from former slaves to
contemporary multimillionaires, from radicals to corporate presidents, from athletes and
rap artists to Ivy League professors, from the revered elders to twelve-year-old Myesha.
They explained what they lived through as black people and what they value. Their
testimony helped me understand, and it can help anyone who is open to learning.
I suggest that readers use these quotations as a first source, and then go to the writers and
books that interest them. Reading the original texts is the best way to understand and be
inspired by black literature.
Students can enhance their reading experience by searching for favorite quotations,
writing or speaking about what their favorites mean to them, and deciding how they can
act on those values.
Some of the most impressive quotations come from women, but the majority are by men.
Throughout the centuries, relatively few black women have had the chance to write or be
published, and, when they did, they often wrote novels.

1
Marian Wright Edelman, JD
Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth represent the thousands of anonymous
women whose voices were muted by slavery, segregation, and confining gender
roles throughout history.
In addition to hundreds of quotations from African Americans, a small number from
white and non-Americans are included.
I use the terms African American and black because it is my perception that today most
Americans of African descent use and prefer those words.
Going against custom, I place speakers’ names before their statements. I feel that reading
the quotation while knowing who expressed it sometimes makes its significance more
impressive. For instance, encouragement to vote from someone who fought and suffered
to gain voting rights has a special impact.
Because the primary goal is economic, I present examples of African Americans who are
successful and wealthy. But no one on these pages says that money is the best thing in
life or that it brings happiness. Instead, men and women speak of the pleasures of living
with one’s spouse and children, of learning and reading, of the sense of accomplishment
that work gives them, and of the fulfillment they obtain from exercising individual
freedom.
W. E. B. Du Bois once asked, "Would America have been America without her Negro
people?" The quotations in this book make it clear that the creativity and productivity of
black Americans have enriched this nation. For me, an America without African
Americans would be a colder, poorer, duller place. I hope that African Americans and
people of other races find this compilation to be useful.
Introduction
African Americans have been using the core values of marriage, education, and work to
climb the economic ladder and to enable their children to climb even higher. As more
people embrace these values, more are likely to succeed.
Juan Williams
The good news is that there is a formula for getting out of poverty today. The

magical steps begin with finishing high school, but finishing college is much
better. Step number two is taking a job and holding it. Step number three is
marrying after finishing school and while you have a job. And the final step to
give yourself the best chance to avoid poverty is to have children only after you
are twenty-one and married. This formula applies to black people and white
people alike.
The poverty rate for any black man or woman who follows that formula is 6.4
percent.
Dr. Maya Angelou, on the importance of both parents raising their children:
This is critical, because more often than not, people who come from homes where
two parents are present will be supported by the family, will receive more
education, will earn their degrees, will more than likely go on to become a part of
the middle and upper-middle class. And more than likely, those who come from
the single-parent homes will not make it as far.
Glenn C. Loury, PhD
There is also good reason to think that the attitudes and values communicated to
youngsters via the cultural milieu of their particular communities of origin—
attitudes about work, family, and education—serve to promote group differences
in economic attainment in adulthood.
Appreciating the progress African Americans have made requires knowing what they
have overcome, and when. From 1619 until 1865, when the Civil War ended, most of the
Africans who were brought here and their descendants lived in slavery. They supported
others but did not have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills for taking
care of themselves in terms of managing finances or independently obtaining housing,
food, and clothing.
After emancipation, black Americans typically were sharecroppers, living and working
on isolated southern farms, in desperate poverty, without civil rights, and often without
adequate nutrition, medical care, or schools.
From the early 1900s until around 1970, the Great Migration brought millions of African
Americans to the modern, urban, industrialized North. These immigrants were separated

from the support of family, friends, and their familiar way of living—a traumatic change.
They had to cope with northern-style discrimination, including segregation, unequal
rights, and limited opportunities at school and work.
Roger Wilkins, JD, 1994
Blacks arrived on the North American continent in 1619. For almost 250 of the
ensuing 375 years we had slavery or something very close to it. And for a century
after that we had Constitutionally sanctioned racial subordination. We have had
something other than slavery or legal racial subordination for only twenty-nine
years.
Debra J. Dickerson, JD
By the migration’s end, America was a changed place: its northern cities teemed
with hopeful blacks who were no longer serfs but were still far from equal. Black
America was changed as well; a century after the end of official slavery, five
minutes past sharecropping, they were only half southern and less than a quarter
rural. Finally, they were also something like free.
Thomas Sowell, PhD
The race as a whole has moved from a position of utter destitution—in money,
knowledge, and rights—to a place alongside other groups emerging in the great
struggles of life. None have had to come from so far back to join their fellow
Americans.
Lorraine Hansberry’s "Mama" from A Raisin in the Sun:
When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him
right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come
through before he got to wherever he is.
Measuring shows that from seemingly endless oppression, that gave most black
Americans little chance to avoid being poor, 75.7 percent had risen above the poverty line
by 2006.
2
Married couples gained the most, and many had become prosperous. By 2003, 23.6
percent of African American married couples had an annual income between $50,000 and

$74,999, and an additional 29.9 percent had an annual income of $75,000 or more.
3
By
2006, 92.9 percent of married-couple African American families were above the poverty
line.
4
Marriage enriches these couples by enabling them to bring in more than one paycheck
while decreasing expenses such as housing costs. At least as valuable, it is a way for a
man and woman to go through life with an intimate friend and partner. But most
important, from a developmental and educational viewpoint, it gives their children all the
resources of two parents working together to raise them.
Education also contributes to the progress. By 2006, 80 percent of African Americans
eighteen and older had graduated high school or gone further.
5
This is close to the
graduation rate of the overall American population, 84.6 percent.
6
All aspects of the
education gap have not been eliminated, but African Americans are moving in the right
direction. For today’s young people, schooling will pay off like never before. The Census
Bureau recently estimated that African American full-time workers with high school
diplomas will earn $1,000,000 throughout their work lives. Those with college degrees
will earn $1,700,000, and those with advanced degrees $2,500,000.
7
The progress and the opportunity for further gains are unprecedented. Just a few decades
ago, most African Americans were restricted to low-skilled jobs, such as laborers and
maids. Major corporations rarely hired black workers; when they did, it was only to
interact with black consumers or to be "window dressing"—giving the false impression
of a diversified workforce. Segregation kept black athletes out of major league sports.
Now, billionaire Robert L. Johnson is the founder of Black Entertainment

Television and the film company Our Stories. He is the majority owner of the
NBA Charlotte Bobcats, and also owns a hedge fund, a private equity firm, a
hundred upscale hotels, gambling ventures, and banks; and he is a philanthropist.
Oprah Winfrey rose from childhood poverty and abuse to become the Emmy
Award–winning host of the highest-rated television talk show ever—and a
billionaire. Ms. Winfrey is an Academy Award–nominated actor, a magazine
publisher, a book critic, and one of the most influential and generous people in the
world.
Until E. Stanley O’Neal retired as Merrill Lynch chairman and CEO in 2007, he
oversaw the investment of $1,600,000,000,000—yes, trillion—of people’s
money.
8
O’Neal’s grandfather had been a slave.
Kenneth Chenault is president and CEO of the world’s most prestigious credit
card company, American Express.
Ann M. Fudge is chairman and CEO of international Young & Rubicam Brands
and its largest division, Y&R Advertising.
Richard Parsons was recently president and CEO of Time Warner, the world's
largest media and entertainment conglomerate.
Franklin Delano Raines recently served as chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae, the
third-largest corporation in America.
Ruth J. Simmons, PhD, daughter of a janitor, is president of Ivy League Brown
University.
Shonda Rhimes, screenwriter, director, and producer, is the creator and executive
producer of the Emmy and Golden Globe Award–winning television series
Grey’s Anatomy.
In addition to being a medical doctor, Mae Jemison is a chemical engineer and
former astronaut.
Benjamin S. Carson, MD, is the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns
Hopkins Hospital. His practice includes traumatic brain injuries, brain and spinal

cord tumors, achondroplasia, neurological and congenital disorders,
craniosynostosis, epilepsy, and trigeminal neuralgia. His research has generated
over ninety neurosurgical publications.
U.S. Congressman John Conyers Jr. has served as chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee
U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel has served as chairman of the powerful Ways
and Means Committee.
Colin Powell has held the nation’s highest-ranking military post, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was secretary of state.
Condoleezza Rice, PhD, is the current secretary of state.
Black athletes have broken racial barriers and excelled at most sports, including
Tiger Woods in golf and Venus and Serena Williams in tennis.
And Barack Obama is the President of the United States of America.
These are exceptional achievers, so the values of marriage, education, and work do not
fully account for their success. But as a group, they are very well-educated and
hardworking. Public sources indicate that all but Ms. Winfrey had married parents
(although Dr. Carson’s father left the family when his son was eight years old,
Congressman Rangel’s father left when his son was six, and President Obama’s father
left when his son was two). Many single parents raise their children well, but, as Dr.
Angelou and others have seen, children raised by both parents are more likely to succeed
in school and the workplace.
African Americans have been succeeding.
Susan L. Taylor
Included among us is the largest group of educated, affluent people of African
ancestry anywhere in the world. We were born for this hour.
We are the most blessed generations of Black people anywhere in the world. We
have everything we need to take charge of our lives and to move our people
forward.
Marriage, education, and work are self-help values. They require confidence and faith in
oneself, not in politicians or anyone else.

Jim Brown
All that matters is to see more and more black people mobilized and working
toward constructive self-help goals.
If in my lifetime I can see that this idea really has taken hold, then I will have the
satisfaction of knowing that true freedom—as black men and as black Americans
—will finally be within our grasp.
Johnnetta B. Cole, PhD
I also know that when African Americans really want to do something, we are
quite capable of figuring out the how. No doubt, as more of us embrace the
concept of self-help, we will come up with all kinds of variations on the theme.
Of course, following through on the tried-and-true methods and developing new
ones will, to some extent, hinge on being inspired with right and righteous
motivations.
Bill Cosby, EdD and Alvin F. Poussaint, MD
When African Americans are committed to something, they make it happen.
A self-help strategy based on values may not seem potent because values are just ideas in
someone’s mind. But Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. knew that ideas could strongly
influence behavior. He was fond of Victor Hugo’s insight: "There is no greater power on
earth than an idea whose time has come."
Cornel West, PhD
Ideas can be used in such a way that it promotes the enhancement and
advancement of poor people in general, and Black people in particular.
Lerone Bennett Jr.
The most urgent problem of the hour is ideological clarity. In fact, strategic
thinking of a depth and intensity unparalleled in our history has become a matter
of life and death.
What are we doing
Why are we doing it?
Will what we are doing take us where we want to go?
And where do we want to go? Until we reach a tentative conclusion on this point,

nothing real can be done.
Oprah Winfrey
Our beliefs can move us forward in life—or they can hold us back.
Instilling constructive values in young people will require more than a book because
some of those who need guidance will not seek it. Family members, friends, teachers,
mentors, writers, musicians, and artists can be more active in bringing wholesome
messages to young people.
Glenn C. Loury, PhD, on advocating self-help:
There are truths which need to be spoken, and repeated, and reiterated—even
when unpopular—until one’s fellows begin to listen, and consider, and finally
accept.
Knowing the backgrounds of these writers and speakers makes their words more
meaningful and vibrant. The Biographical Notes contain information on every person
who has three or more quotations included in this book. Of course, fuller biographical
information is available on the Internet and in books. Three legendary historic figures
who are quoted are Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Reverend Martin Luther
King Jr.
As a teenaged slave, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was so rebellious that his "owner"
hired a "slave breaker" to crush his spirit. Young Frederick fought and defeated the man.
Although schooling was forbidden and learning to read was punishable by death,
Douglass became a reader. He believed that reading was the key to his escape. As a free
man, Douglass hid fugitive slaves in his home and made powerful speeches that helped
bring an end to the institution of slavery. His 1852 Fourth of July speech should please
anyone who enjoys hearing truth spoken to power.
9
Frederick Douglass edited a
newspaper, The North Star, which pointed the way to freedom. His words remain today,
still pointing in that direction.
W. E. B. Du Bois, PhD (1868–1963), was Afrocentric before the word existed. He grew
up singing the songs of his Bantu great-grandmother and spent his final years in Ghana,

where his body is buried. From young adulthood until the age of ninety-five, Du Bois
fought for the rights of African Americans. Alice Walker wrote that Du Bois showed a
"consistent delight in the beauty and spirit of black people." Dr. Kwame Nkrumah,
President of Ghana, told the people of his nation, "We mourn the death of Dr. William
Edward Burghardt Du Bois, a great son of Africa.…He was an undaunted fighter for the
emancipation of colonial and oppressed people.…a real friend and father to me.…a great
African Patriot."
Du Bois’s confidence in black people is reflected in his writing.
W. E. B. Du Bois, PhD, 1920
Europe has never produced and never will in our day bring forth a single human
soul who cannot be matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor
by Asia and Africa.
Before Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., PhD (1929–1968) became a civil rights leader,
it was not safe for Southern black people to drink from a "white" fountain, attempt to
register to vote, or join the NAACP. Reverend Ralph Abernathy said that before King,
it was "peculiar for the Southern Negro to stand up and look a white man in the face as an
equal." King played an important part in changing those conditions. Along with voter
registration workers, bus boycotters, sit-in participants, freedom riders, and freedom
summer volunteers, he fought for access to public facilities, voting rights, and other civil
rights. Today, black Americans have access to public facilities, the right to vote, and
substantial political power; it is hard to believe that there was a time of white fountains
and fearful black people.
The first time King’s house was bombed, his father, King Sr., advised him to moderate
his civil rights activities, saying, "It’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion." But the
young reverend chose to continue fighting. Today, black people all over America
experience less discrimination and greater opportunity because of this lion.
In Part I, "Background," African Americans tell of the oppression they have experienced,
the progress they have made, and their strategy of emphasizing opportunity to achieve
further gains. In "Self-Reliance," they assert that they are the people who are most
willing, able, and responsible for helping themselves.

In Part II, the core values are presented in the sequence of marriage, education, and then
work, in keeping with the natural progression of married parents producing children who
go to school and then to work.
In Part III, "Obstacles," African Americans argue against factors that impede progress.
They discourage crime and drug use, recognize that conformity limits their individual
freedom, and warn against passivity.
Part I Background
Chapter 1: Oppression
Knowledge of the oppression black Americans have endured is conducive to progress.
James Baldwin
In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent
reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to look back; but I think that the past
is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain
horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.
Thuvia Jones, student
If young Black people today better understood what came before them, it would
be easier for us to understand how far we’ve come and how to get where we’re
going.
Thomas Sowell, PhD
Neither Europeans, Asians, or Africans escaped the fate of being slaves or the
guilt of being enslavers.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., PhD
Who are we? We are the descendants of slaves. We are the offspring of noble men
and women who were kidnapped from their native land and chained in ships like
beasts. We are the heirs of a great and exploited continent known as Africa. We
are the heirs of a past of rope, fire and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this
past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this
torture upon us.
Frederick Douglass characterized the slaveholders’ acts of injustice and cruelty as
"crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

John W. Blassingame, PhD
Taken on board the ship, the naked Africans were shackled together on bare
wooden boards in the hold, and packed so tightly that they could not sit upright.
The foul and poisonous air of the hold, extreme heat, men lying for hours in their
own defecation, with blood and mucus covering the floor, caused a great deal of
sickness.
A number of them went insane and many became so despondent that they gave up
the will to live.
Mary Gaffney, former slave
That was all the slave thought about, then: not being a slave. Because slavery time
was hell.
Wallace Turnage, on being a teen slave punished for escaping:
So they brought me out and took me over to the whiping house. And the man that
whiped asked my Master did he want me whiped, the old man said yes. So they
had my pants off and tied me in the ropes that was tied up against the wall So that
the criminal might be clear the floor and could not look behind himself to see
what they were doing to him.
So they tied the rope around my legs and arms. And they had a strap there about
two or three leathers thick. and they hit me thirty lashes with that strap. They
would hit me Ten licks and then let me cool off a while and then give me Ten
more. Now when the man that whiped me had hit me Twenty licks he asked my
Master would that do. he said, give him ten more, and every lick took the skin off.
Frederick Douglass
The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest,
there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her
to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the
blood-clotted cowskin.
Sojourner Truth, former slave
I know what it is to be taken in the barn and tied up and the blood drawn out of
your bare back, and I tell you it would make you think about God. Yes, and then I

felt, O God, if I was you and you felt like I do, and asked me for help I would
help you—now why won’t you help me?
Charlie Moses, former slave
He whipped us till some jus’ lay down to die.
Mary Prince, former slave
I then saw my sisters led forth, and sold to different owners; so that we had not
the sad satisfaction of being partners in bondage. When the sale was over, my
mother hugged and kissed us, and mourned over us, begging of us to keep up a
good heart, and do our duty to our new masters. It was a sad parting; one went
one way, one another, and our poor mammy went home with nothing.
I wish I could find words to tell you all I then felt and suffered. The great God
above alone knows the thoughts of the poor slave’s heart, and the bitter pains
which follow such separations as these. All that we love taken away from us—
Oh, it is sad, sad! And sore to be borne!
Sis Shackelford, former slave
Had a slave jail built at the crossroads with iron bars ‘cross the windows. Soon as
the coffle get there, they bring all the slaves from the jail two at a time and string
‘em along the chain back of the other po’ slaves. Everybody in the villages come
out—especially the wives and sweethearts and mothers—to see their sold-off
children for the last time. And when they start the chain a-clanking and step off
down the line, they all just sing and shout and make all the noises they can, trying
to hide the sorrow in their hearts and cover up the cries and moaning of them they
were leaving behind. Oh, Lord!
Despite the viciousness, it was in the slaveholders’ interest to limit the physical
harm to slaves and to keep their families intact.
John W. Blassingame, PhD
Dependent on the slave’s labor for his economic survival, the planter ordinarily
could not afford to starve, torture, or work him to death.
Most masters were neither pitiless fiends nor saints in their relationships with
slaves.

Paula Giddings
Family relationships among American slaves both discouraged rebellion and
runaways, and encouraged a self-sustaining reproduction of the labor force.
Sarah Debro, former slave
Marse Cain was good to his niggers. He didn’t whip them like some owners did,
but if they done mean, he sold them. They knew this so they minded him. One
day Grandpappy sassed Miss Polly White, and she told him that if he didn’t
behave hisself that she would put him in her pocket. Grandpappy was a big man
and I ask him how Miss Polly could do that. He said she meant that she would sell
him, then put the money in her pocket. He never did sass Miss Polly no more.
John W. Blassingame, PhD
If only the actions of masters are considered, 67.6 percent of the slave unions
were unbroken. In other words, in spite of their callous attitudes, masters did not
separate a majority of the slave couples.
Howard Dodson
Indeed, a study of the 1850 and 1860 manuscript censuses suggests that a larger
percentage of adult slaves compared with southern adult free whites were or had
been married at the time of death.
Although the slaveholders had weapons and power, many slaves rebelled and escaped.
Nat Turner led a fierce rebellion in Virginia in 1831. Harriet Tubman escaped, and then
returned to the South and led slaves to freedom. She also planned and executed a military
raid with Union troops that freed more than seven hundred slaves.
10
* * *
Surely, slaves were buoyed by hopes of freedom, a benevolent freedom conducive to
recovery from centuries of ordeal. It is unfortunate that the freedom that came was so
limited.
W. E. B. Du Bois, PhD
The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again
toward slavery.

Patsy Moore, former slave
When freedom come, folks left home, out in the streets, crying, praying, singing,
shouting, yelling, and knocking down everything. Some shot off big guns. Then
come the calm. It was sad then. So many folks done dead, things tore up, and
nowheres to go and nothing to eat, nothing to do. It got squally. Folks got sick, so
hungry. Some folks starved nearly to death. Times got hard.
Jake Goodridge, former slave
The Yankee soldiers give out news of Freedom. They was shouting around. I just
stood around to see what they was gonna do next. Didn’t nobody give me nothing.
I didn’t know what to do next. Didn’t nobody give me nothing. I didn’t know
what to do. Everything going. Tents all gone, no place to stay and nothin’ to eat.
That was the big freedom to us colored folks. I got hungry and naked and cold
many a time.
Patsy Michener, former slave
They was turned out with nowhere to go and nothing to live on. They had no
experience in looking out for themselves and nothing to work with and no land.
Pauli Murray wrote that as her grandfather, Robert G. Fitzgerald, traveled in Virginia in
1866, he saw "straggling caravans of homeless Negroes still roaming the roads in search
of shelter, food and work"
They plodded along barefoot or with rags bound around their feet and ankles.
They wore odds and ends of cast-off clothing, faded and patched beyond
recognition. Some had on sewed-up gunny sacks tied about the waist with cord.
White men were determined that black men give them the same unquestioned
obedience they had exacted before the war; black men were equally determined to
be "treated just like white men."
Mary Frances Berry, JD, PhD and John W. Blassingame, PhD
Almost immediately after the war the planters turned to sharecropping
arrangements with black farmers.
Generally penniless, they obtained advances on their wages or shares of the crop.
Since they were illiterate, the planters often overcharged and cheated them. The

result was perpetual debt, compulsion, violence, oppression, and de facto slavery.
Dorothy Sterling
It was common practice, many testified, for employers to dismiss them without
pay as they neared the end of their contract year.
Henry Robinson
I know we been beat out of money direct and indirect. You see, they got a chance
to do it all right, ‘cause they can overcharge us and I know it’s being done. I made
three bales again last year. He said I owed $400 the beginning of the year. Now
you can’t dispute his word. When I said "Suh?" he said "Don’t you dispute my
word; the book says so." When the book says so and so you better pay it, or they
will say "So, I’m a liar, eh?" You better take to the bushes too if you dispute him,
for he will string you up for that.
Mary Frances Berry, JD, PhD and John W. Blassingame, PhD
Later this system was augmented by the convict lease system, in which planters
either paid the fines of black prisoners or were permitted to work them until their
sentences were served.
Angela Y. Davis
Through the convict lease system, black people were forced to play the same old
roles carved out for them by slavery. Men and women alike were arrested and
imprisoned at the slightest pretext—in order to be leased out by the authorities as
convict laborers. Whereas the slaveholders had recognized limits to the cruelty
with which they exploited their "valuable" human property, no such cautions were
necessary for the postwar planters who rented Black convicts for relatively short
terms. "In many cases sick convicts are made to toil until they drop dead in their
tracks."
* * *
Some of the emancipated slaves found ways to succeed. Racist whites sometimes reacted
by lynching them.
Pierce Harper, former slave
If they got so they made good money and had a good farm, the Klu Klux would

come and murder ’em. The government builded schoolhouses and the Klu Klux
went to work and burned ’em down. They’d go to the jails and take the colored
men out and knock their brains out and break their necks and throw ’em in the
river.
There was a colored man they taken. His name was Jim Freeman. They taken him
and destroyed his stuff and him ’cause he was making some money. Hung him on
a tree in his front yard, right in front of his cabin.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett investigated lynchings and found that they were:
An excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus
keep the race terrorized and "keep the nigger down."
Much of the racist violence aimed to dominate and intimidate.
Margaret Walker, PhD
Before I was ten I knew what it was to step off the sidewalk to let a white man
pass; other wise he might knock me off. I had had a sound thrashing by white
boys while Negro men looked on helplessly. My father was chased home one
night at the point of a gun by a drunken policeman who resented seeing a fountain
pen in a "nigger’s" pocket.
Anonymous, seventy, on the death of her father, a blind musician:
A carload of young crackers from somewhere ran him down in front of our house.
They were just playing with him, but when he didn’t run, the one at the wheel got
mad and ran right over him. He didn’t die for a week, but he was out of his head. I
was twenty-one. He died on my birthday.
[He] was the only person I ever knew who thought I was sweet.
Patrice Gaines
I was watching the news a couple of weeks later and saw that a Birmingham
church had been bombed, killing four girls. Three of them were fourteen years
old, like me. I imagined what it was like for them, sitting in Sunday school one
moment and blown to death the next.
David Bradley
In 1997, near a town called Independence, Virginia, two white men kidnapped a

black man named Garnett Paul Johnson, hung him on a cross, soaked him with
gasoline, burned him to death, and then beheaded the body with a dull ax. A year
later, near a town called Jasper, Texas, three white men kidnapped a black man
named James Byrd Jr., spray-painted him white, chained him to the bumper of a
pickup, and dragged him until his body parts were distributed along two miles of
country road.
Mamie Till-Mobley, 2003
Emmett Louis Till, my only son, my only child, was kidnapped, tortured, and
murdered at the hands of white racists on August 28, 1955. That was so many
years ago, yet it seems like only yesterday to a mother who needs no reminders.
Hardly a moment goes by when I don’t think about Emmett.
* * *
Racists targeted civil rights workers.
Stanley Crouch, on Robert Moses:
Moses would walk into the most dangerous of towns, calmly stride up to a door,
and begin talking about registering to vote. He would be arrested and beaten, then
released. He would wash up, check his teeth, his glasses, change clothes, and go
back out to register people to vote.
Taylor Branch
Four students and a white professor from Tougaloo College staged a sit-in at the
Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson. It lasted for three hours, which gave
converging reporters plenty of time to record the details. A mob of young whites
took turns slathering the demonstrators with ketchup, mustard, and sugar—a
scene graphically depicted in the next issue of Newsweek. After dragging them off
the stools only to watch them return, the whites doused them with spray paint and
then, growing annoyed, began sporadically to beat them. The tormentors darted
forward to pour salt into the professor’s head wound after someone clubbed him
to the floor.
U.S. Congressman John Lewis, on the 1965 Bloody Sunday march in Selma:
There was mayhem all around me. I could see a young kid—a teenaged boy—

sitting on the ground with a gaping cut in his head, the blood just gushing out.
Several women, including Mrs. Boynton, were lying on the pavement and the
grass medium. People were weeping. Some were vomiting from the tear gas. Men
on horses were moving in all directions, purposely riding over the top of fallen
people, bringing their animals’ hooves down on shoulders, stomachs, and legs.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., PhD, on Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth:
Back at Christmas 1956, Shuttlesworth’s home was bombed and completely
demolished. In the winter of 1956, his church, Bethel Baptist, was dynamited by
racists, and later in 1957, Shuttlesworth and his wife were mobbed, beaten, and
stabbed. They were also jailed eight times, four times during the Freedom Rides.
Unita Blackwell, civil rights activist
You couldn’t trust nobody because the police was the Klans. The police was
burning the cross in my yard.
Have you ever been in a condition where there is no place you can
call for help?
Paula Giddings
Fannie Lou Hamer and Annelle Ponder were arrested in Winona and viciously beaten
with leaded leather straps. Hamer was permanently debilitated by the assault and
disfigured so badly that she wouldn’t let her family see her for a month. Ponder, one of
two SCLC voter-education teachers stationed permanently in Mississippi, was also
brutally beaten. Hamer had overheard Ponder’s guard in the adjacent cell:
"Cain’t you say yessir, nigger? Cain’t you say yessir, bitch?"
Then Ponder’s voice: "Yes, I can say yessir."
"Well, say it," the guard said.
"I don’t know you well enough," Ponder retorted.
And then Hamer heard the strokes. "She kept screamin’, and they kept beatin’
her," said Hamer, "and finally she started prayin’ for ’em, and she asked God to
have mercy on ’em because they didn’t know what they was doin’."
Some days later, a SNCC worker went to see Annelle Ponder in jail. Her face was
so swollen that she could scarcely talk, the worker reported. "She looked at me

and was able to whisper one word: Freedom."
Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of civil rights activist Medgar Evers:
I know what it is like to be in court and watch the man accused of murdering your
husband and witness the Governor of Mississippi walk in, sit down, shake hands
and proudly slap the accused man on the back.
Rosa Parks, on her reaction to the murder of Reverend King:
Mama and I wept quietly together.
* * *
African Americans have been stereotyped and segregated.
Margaret Walker, PhD
In movie after movie black people, individually and collectively, were demeaned
and dehumanized, portrayed as naked savages, animals, stupid clowns or
buffoons, and imbecilic servants, criminals, and children.
As a child, reading the history books in the South, I was humiliated by some
unhappy picture or reference to a Negro. Such items made me burn all over.
Shelby Steele, PhD
Black skin has more dehumanizing stereotypes associated with it than any other
skin color in America, if not in the world. When a black presents himself in an
integrated situation, he knows that his skin alone may bring these stereotypes to
life in the minds of those he meets and that he, as an individual, may be
diminished by his race before he has a chance to reveal a single aspect of his
personality.
Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., on the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson
decision upholding the "separate but equal" doctrine of segregation:
This single decision legitimized the worst forms of race discrimination, which
then became the law of our nation for six decades.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., PhD
If you wanted to visit a church attended by white people, you would not be
welcome.
Mary McLeod Bethune, 1936

The cultural advantages of the concert, lectures and public discussions are closed
to him.
Langston Hughes, 1946
At least a hundred times (making a conservative estimate) I have been refused
service in public restaurants in strange cities.
Coretta Scott King
Blacks were required to sit and stand at the rear of the buses, even if there were
empty seats in the front section, which was reserved for whites. Furthermore,
blacks had to pay their fares at the front of the bus, get off and walk to the rear to
reboard through the back door. Drivers often pulled off and left them after they
had paid their fares.
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson
Old black men and women were even forced to get out of seats so that white
school children could sit down.
Juan Williams, on Birmingham, Alabama:
In 1962 the city closed sixty-eight parks, thirty-eight playgrounds, six swimming
pools and four golf courses to avoid complying with a federal court order to
desegregate public facilities.
Langston Hughes, on "the beloved Juliette Derricotte":
Injured in a wreck on a Southern road, that cultured woman was denied hospital
treatment at the nearest white hospital. By the time a Negro hospital was found
miles away, she was dead.
Patricia J. Williams, JD
When my sister was in the fourth grade, she was the only black child in the class.
One Valentine’s Day, when the teacher went out of the room, all her white
classmates ripped the valentines she had sent them and dumped them on her desk.
It was so traumatic that my sister couldn’t speak again in that class, she refused to
participate: so completely had they made her feel not part of that group.
* * *
Educational opportunities have been restricted.

Mary Frances Berry, PhD and John W. Blassingame, PhD
The blacks’ passion for education in the 1860s was equaled by the whites’ desire
to deny or limit the education they received. During the early years of
Reconstruction, southern whites burned schools (thirty-seven in Tennessee in
1869) and regularly insulted and whipped white teachers of blacks.
Audrey Edwards and Craig K. Polite, PhD
"Separate" school accommodations typically meant wretched ones for blacks. It
was not uncommon to find black schools overcrowded, housed in shanty shacks
with no heat or running water, textbooks worn and outdated. In 1930 the average
expenditure per school-age child was $45 per white pupil and $14.95 per black
pupil.
Cornel West, PhD, said that with few exceptions, blacks were kept out of the elite white
universities until the late 1960s.
* * *
Black people have also faced discrimination in the workplace.
Mary McLeod Bethune, letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937:
Our Country opens wide the door of opportunity to the youth of the world but
slams it shut in the faces of its Negro citizenry.
Whitney M. Young Jr., Chicago, 1960s:
Bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, and heavy equipment operators are among
America’s highest-paid workers. Almost none of the union locals in these fields
admits Negroes; some have admitted a token handful. The most qualified Negro
worker has practically no hope of finding a job without a union card in thousands
of communities and hundreds of occupational categories.…
Whatever grudging concessions the system was willing to make for European
immigrants, it absolutely refused to grant them to the black man. The earlier
immigrants may have realized that their ten-hour day of ditch-digging or
sweatshop labor would not result in riches for themselves, but they had ample
evidence that their efforts would pay off for their children. They knew that the
system was open-ended and that whatever they scraped together for a son’s

education would pay off in his freedom, if not their own. The black labored as
hard, but he knew that he could only hope to bequeath his shovel to his son; he
knew the system was closed, and that a black man dared not hope.
Henry "Hank" Aaron
I remember sitting out on the back porch once when an airplane flew over, and I
told Daddy I’d like to be a pilot when I grew up. He said, "Ain’t no colored
pilots." I said, okay, then, I’ll be a ballplayer. He said, "Ain’t no colored
ballplayers."
Jackie Robinson
After two years at UCLA I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of
education would help a black man get a job.
Larry Elder, JD, on a friend in employment recruiting:
She has clients that have told her not to send over black people: "Don't send me
somebody black no matter how qualified. I don't want them in my house."
* * *
In answering the call and serving our nation in wars, African Americans have suffered
imprisonment, torture, lifelong injuries, and death, depriving their families of providers
and loved ones.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Negro women give their sons to their country with as much enthusiasm and
loyalty as other women.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
African American soldiers had served with the highest distinction in nearly every
major conflict since the Revolutionary War.
For example, the African American 761st Tank Battalion was awarded the Presidential
Unit Citation for Extraordinary Heroism for its role in defeating the Nazis. Battalion
members were awarded two hundred ninety-six Purple Hearts, eleven Silver Stars, and
seventy Bronze Stars, and Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers was awarded the Congressional
Medal of Honor.
11

Sergeant Rivers’ medal citation reads:
Though severely wounded in the leg, Sergeant Rivers refused medical treatment and
evacuation, took command of another tank, and advanced with his company in Guebling
the next day. Repeatedly refusing evacuation, Sergeant Rivers continued to direct his
tank's fire at enemy positions through the morning of 19 November 1944. At dawn,
Company A's tanks began to advance towards Bougaktroff, but were stopped by enemy
fire. Sergeant Rivers, joined by another tank, opened fire on the enemy tanks, covering
company A as they withdrew. While doing so, Sergeant River's [sic] tank was hit, killing
him and wounding the crew.
How has America responded to the patriotic military service of African Americans?
John Hope Franklin, PhD, on the conclusion of World War I:
Returning Negro soldiers were lynched by hanging and burning, even while still
in their military uniforms. The Klan warned Negroes that they must respect the
rights of the white race "in whose country they are permitted to reside." Racial
conflicts swept the country, and neither federal nor state governments seemed
interested in effective intervention.
Fannie Lou Hamer
They would go in the service and go through all of that and come right out to be
drowned in the river in Mississippi.
Ned Cobb, aka Nate Shaw
I’ve had white people tell me, "This is white man’s country, white man’s
country." They don’t sing that to the colored man when it comes to war. Then it’s
all our country, go fight for the country. Go over there and risk his life for the
country and come back, he aint a bit more thought of than he was before the war.
James Baldwin, on the African American World War II veteran:
You must put yourself in the skin of a man who is wearing the uniform of his
country, is a candidate for death in its defense, and who is called a "nigger" by his
comrades-in-arms and his officers; who is almost always given the hardest,
ugliest, most menial work to do; who knows that the white G.I. has informed the
Europeans that he is subhuman (so much for the American male's sexual

security); who does not dance at the U.S.O. the night white soldiers dance there,
and does not drink in the same bars white soldiers drink in; and who watches
German prisoners of war being treated by Americans with more human dignity
than he has ever received at their hands. And who, at the same time, as a human
being, is far freer in a strange land than he has ever been at home. Home! The
very word begins to have a despairing and diabolical ring. You must consider
what happens to this citizen, after all he has endured, when he returns—home:
search, in his shoes, for a job, for a place to live; ride, in his skin, on segregated
buses; see, with his eyes, the signs saying "White" and "Colored," and especially
the signs that say "White Ladies" and "Colored Women"; look into the eyes of his
wife; look into the eyes of his son; listen, with his ears, to political speeches,
North and South; imagine yourself being told to "wait."
John Hope Franklin, PhD, referred to his brother, Buck Jr., who was traumatized by
discrimination in the United States Army in World War II:
He had been drafted by a segregated army and had served his country more
honorably than that country had served him.
* * *
With lethal violence, large numbers of whites have rioted against smaller numbers of
African Americans. Whites rioted against blacks in New York City in 1863, in East St.
Louis in 1917, Washington DC and Chicago in 1919, Detroit in 1943, and in other cities
at other times.
12
Rioters killed between forty and three hundred African Americans in the
prosperous, predominantly black Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921.
13
Brent Staples
By the time the Oklahoma National Guard marched into Greenwood, in the late
morning of June 1, virtually all of black Tulsa had gone up in smoke and ash.
About 1,200 buildings were burned or looted or both. For months afterward, black
Tulsans would encounter white people on the streets wearing familiar clothing

and jewelry looted from black homes.
Debra J. Dickerson, JD
Police and soldiers often took part in the riots.
* * *
The government has used the right of eminent domain to dismantle African American
and other residential areas to make room for public projects. Seneca Village, which
existed in New York City from 1825 to 1857, was removed for the construction of a
section of Central Park. This was a biracial community, although predominantly black,
including two churches and a school. African American men who lost their land also lost
their qualification for precious voting rights. New York compensated homeowners for
their property, but many residents felt that the compensation was inadequate and sued in
state court.
14
From 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service passively observed over four
hundred black men with syphilis while their health deteriorated. The agency did not
inform the men of the diagnosis, counsel them to avoid spreading the disease, or give
them penicillin when it was found to be an effective treatment. In 1974, the Health
Service responded to a class-action suit by providing cash awards to the seventy
survivors and to the heirs of the men who had died.
15
State laws forbidding black and white people from marrying or having sex together were
in effect until 1967.
16
The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair displayed pygmies brought from Africa. In 1906, the
Bronx Zoo in New York City displayed Ota Benga, a pygmy, in the monkey house.
17
* * *
African Americans have spent more time in slavery than in freedom. Much of their time
in "freedom" was under conditions that severely restricted their social and economic
advancement. They have written that it also harmed their sense of hopefulness.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault
I’m sure that slavery and all the other things that followed in its wake have had
some deeply scarring psychological effects, and we’ve got to deal with those.
J. L. Chestnut Jr., JD
I told an emotional crowd in a black church in Opelika in east Alabama that in
black America it is common to hear what can’t be done. Too many of us are
obsessed with the impossible. Four hundred years of slavery and segregation have
had an awesome impact on the black mind.
In India, a baby bull elephant is tied by the leg to a tree. He tries to free himself,
can’t and eventually gives up. A grown elephant is a massive creature, strong
enough to uproot a tree, yet he can be restrained by a little rope tied to a sapling. It
is the elephant’s mind, not the rope, that enslaves him.
Derek S. Hopson, PhD and Darlene Powell Hopson, PhD
When people are convinced they cannot succeed, no matter how hard they work
and regardless of what they do, they usually stop trying. Even minor obstacles
become overwhelming. They no longer feel in control of their destiny and accept
defeat. This passive condition is called learned helplessness.
When he was a child, friends of Clarence Thomas often said:
The man ain’t goin’ let you do nothin’, why you even tryin’?
Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson
Racism was all around me, I thought, and I began to wonder what was the point of
trying to work hard and do well if "Whitey" was just going to take it all away
from me anyway.
I was passive, expecting the government and politicians to create ways for me to
succeed.
Bill Cosby, EdD
And victims, we know, feel helpless and behave as if their destiny is completely
controlled by others. Worse, a victim does not accept responsibility for himself or
herself, blaming others for his or her predicaments and failures. A victim’s
attitude is epitomized by the African-American student who fails a physics exam

and blames it on the professor’s racism even though the student did not prepare
for the examination.
Louis W. Sullivan, MD
The tragic truth is that the language of "victimization" is the true victimizer—a
great crippler of young minds and spirits. To teach young people that their lives
are governed—not by their own actions, but by socio-economic forces or
government budgets or other mysterious and fiendish sources beyond their control
—is to teach our children negativism, resignation, passivity and despair.
Derrick Bell
Drug-related crime, teenaged parenthood, and disrupted and disrupting family life
all are manifestations of a despair that feeds on self.
* * *
What can be learned from this experience of oppression? African Americans have written
of their appreciation of the sweetness of freedom and of the need to make the most of it.
Wallace Turnage, free man
The next morning I was up early and took a look at the rebels country with a
thankful heart to think that I had made my escape with safety after such a long
struggle; and had obtained that freedom which I desired so long. I Now dreaded
the gun, and handcuffs and pistols no more. Nor the blewing of horns and the
running of hounds; nor the threats of death from the rebel’s authority. I could now
speak my opinion to men of all grades and colors, and no one to question my right
to speak.
Annette Gordon-Reed, of Peter Fossett, who became a caterer:
After his emancipation Fossett and his family, as did millions of other blacks,
picked up their lives and went forward, taking with them the lessons of family
loyalty, the importance of self-improvement, and faith. There is no better lesson
that we can learn from the lives of the enslaved. If we want to be worthy of them,
we must learn it.
Bill Cosby, EdD and Alvin F. Poussaint, MD
It is important to understand the legacy of slavery, but it is even more important to

transcend it, to break the psychological shackles that still bind us.
Mamie Till-Mobley
We cannot afford the luxury of self-pity. Our top priority now is to get on with the
building process.
Lauren Lake
Now, lastly, we’ve got to take this helplessness and this hopelessness and wrap it
up and put it into the dumpster.
Orlando Patterson, PhD
Optimism, when justified, itself becomes a good part of the cure.
Russell Simmons
I really believe the last generation removed the physical barriers of the struggle.
Now it’s up to you to overcome the mental barriers. The final struggle is the
spiritual barriers in your mind. And you can overcome the struggle by working
your hardest to take advantage of all the opportunity we have in this country.
Ezola Foster
Let us not forget the courage of the black people who came before us.
Dr. Maya Angelou
Bringing the gifts that our ancestors gave, we are the hope and the dream of the
slave.
Chapter 2: Opportunity
The oppression continues in forms ranging from social insults to 3,136 anti-black hate
crime offenses in 2006.
18
But African Americans, in alliance with friends of other races,
have decreased the discrimination against them and increased the opportunity available to
them. They have used these improved conditions to succeed and to contribute to their
country and the world. The story of African Americans is not only about oppression.
Thomas Sowell, PhD
Although blacks suffered in body and mind under slavery, they did not emerge as
a spiritually crushed people.

Howard Dodson
Far from being mere victims of slavery, racism, and cultural oppression in the
United States and the Americas, enslaved Africans and their descendants have
been active, creative, thinking human beings who made their own histories and
cultures during slavery and continue to do so today. Wherever we look on the
American political, cultural, social, or economic landscape in the 21st century,
people of African descent are also involved in shaping America’s history, culture,
and destiny.
Shelby Steele, PhD
It was also imagination, courage, the exercise of free will, and a very definite
genius that enabled blacks not only to survive victimization but also to create a
great literature, utterly transform Western music, help shape the American
language, expand and deepen the world’s concept of democracy, influence
popular culture around the globe, and so on.
A’Lelia Bundles
We are more than slave history.
Bill Cosby, EdD and Alvin F. Poussaint, MD
As history has shown, we are a resilient people. We overcome.