To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for the Negro I would be thankful the rest of my life.

If I can do one hundredth part for the Indian that Mrs. Stowe did for the Negro I will be thankful.

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic ludicrous side of it and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you've got the respect of white and colored you can ease a lot of things.

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

Through the years I have received my share of recognition for efforts in the fields of sports the arts the struggle for full citizenship for the Negro people labor's rights and the fight for peace.

I know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.

I think Muslims have become the new Negroes in America. They are being mistreated at airports by the Immigration - everywhere. Islam is a religion of peace. They are wrong.

It would be against all nature for all the Negroes to be either at the bottom top or in between. We will go where the internal drive carries us like everybody else. It is up to the individual.

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade a musical idea no matter how innovative is threatened.

I grew up watching those blaxploitation movies. Ron O'Neal Richard Roundtree Jim Brown Pam Grier. For the first time I saw 'The Negro' get one over on 'The Man.'

The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul later as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.

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.

And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.