NEGRO

Related Subject: Slavery

1. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?—Bible, Jeremiah 13:23

2. My mother bore me in the southern wild,
   And I am black, but O my soul is white!—BLAKE, The Little Black Boy
   

3. The Negro tenant farmer on a plantation is still a slave.—ERSKINE CALDWELL, You Have Seen Their Faces
   

4. The Negro, thanks to his temperament, appears to make the greatest amount of happiness out of the smallest capital.—EMERSON, Journal
   

5. The influence of the Negro, upon the psychology of the American has been tremendous. The white may have educated the black; but that education has been returned in a dozen subtle ways. We taught him things; he taught us feelings. We gave him knowledge; he has helped to give us passion which is not the meaner of the gifts. From the first, the white has been under some psychologic compulsion to mimic the Negro, at first in ridicule and superiority, then in understanding and sympathy. The Negro, at almost every step, has participated in the making of our popular song.—ISAAC GOLDBERG, Tin-Pan Alley
   

6. To fling my arms wide
   In the face of the sun,
   Dance! whirl! whirl!
   Till the quick day is done.
   Rest at pale evening .. .
   A tall slim tree. . . .
   Night coming tenderly
   Black like me.—LANGSTON HUGHES, Dream Variation
   

7. The night is beautiful
   So the faces of my people.
   The stars are beautiful
   So the eyes of my people.
   Beautiful, also, is the sun.
   Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.—LANGSTON HUGHES, My People
   

8. I, too, sing America.
   I am the darker brother.
   They send me to eat in the kitchen
   When company comes,
   But I laugh,
   And eat well,
   And grow strong.
   
   Tomorrow,
   I'll sit at the table
   When company comes.
   Nobody'll dare
   Say to me,
   "Eat in the kitchen,"
   Then . . .
   I, too am America.—LANGSTON HUGHES, I Too
   

9. All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.—LINCOLN
   

10. In the right to eat the bread . . .. which his own hand earns, he [the negro] is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.—LINCOLN, Debate
    

11. 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 think of the Negro's sword.—WENDELL PHILLIPS
    

12. I said to the mulatto delegate: "That's what Negroes need in American politics—a highly organized all-Negro group. When you have that .. . you will be getting somewhere. We may feel inflated as individual Negroes sitting in on the councils of the whites, but it means very little if our people are not organized. Otherwise the whites will want to tell us what is right for our people even against our better thinking.—CLAUDE MCKAY, A Long Way From Home
    

13. "When I was a slave, if I fell off a boat they would stop and pick me up and put me by a fire to dry. I was worth money. Now if I fall off a boat they calls out, 'It's only a damned nigger—let him go under.' "—A NEWLY FREED NEGRO, Sandburg: Abraham Lincoln, theWar Years