Black Pride

On this page, you'll find words of wisdom on black Pride � sometimes poetic, sometimes humorous, but always straight from the heart

Black people dominate sports in the United States. 20% of the population and 90% of the final four.
Chris Rock

Blackness is a state of mind and I identify with the black community. Mainly, because I realized, early on, when I walk into a room, people see a black woman, they don't see a white women. So out of that reason alone, I identify more with the black community.
Halle Berry

Here I stand before you - brown. Color of the mountains Colossal as the earth Wrapped so deliciously within my own joy and misery Feathers of my wings paralyzed by the distance of my mind Here I stand before you, the color of the night Frozen by the potential of me.
Will Smith, Afro Angel

How hard a thing is life to the lowly and yet how human and real is it? And all this life and love and strife and failure, -- is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? The answer lies in each of us. For somewhere in your past ... somewhere some 100 years ago?there rose from the smoldering ashes of slavery?a proud and humble family who suffered and struggled with life. A family who found the strength to endure all the indignities of life in America, and that family had the hope for a taste of her bounties in the future.
W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
June Jordan

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.
Langston Hughes, Negro

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.
Zora Neale Hurston

I am of the African race, and in the colour which is natural to them of the deepest dye; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.
Benjamin Banneker, Banneker's letter to Jefferson

I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.
Maya Angelou

I don't have a problem with being black in a white country or being with my people.
Tina Turner

I don't see a white woman. I see a black woman, even though my mother is white. Knowing that has made my life easier, I think.
Halle Berry

I never had that thing about being black. If the whole world was like that, maybe there would be more harmony and love.
Tina Turner, Tina Turner Bids Farewell

I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither....So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.
Toni Morrison

I who have gone the gamut from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a surprised queenhood in the new Black sunam qualified to enter at least the kindergarten of new consciousness now... I have hopes for myself.
Gwendolyn Brooks

I'm black, I don't feel burdened by it and I don't think it's a huge responsibility. It's part of who I am. It does not define me.
Oprah Winfrey

I've never bothered about my color.
Tina Turner, Tina Turner Bids Farewell

I've pretty much learned I can let that [being black] hinder me if I want to ... or I can fight for different kinds of roles.
Halle Berry

In my music, my plays, my films, I want to carry always this central idea: to be African.
Paul Robeson

It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . to change through the force of his art that old whispering "I want to be white," hidden in the aspirations of his people, to "Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro ? and beautiful!.
Langston Hughes

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the treads of that tapestry are equal in value no matter their color.
Maya Angelou

Negro blood is sure powerful ? because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop ? you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.
Langston Hughes, Simple Takes a Wife

None of us is responsible for the complexion of his skin. This fact of nature offers no clue to the character or quality of the person underneath.
Marian Anderson

Not all black men are willing to commit race suicide and to abhor their race for the companionship of another. There are hundreds of millions of us black men who are proud of our skins, and to us the African Empire will not be a Utopia, neither will it be dangerous, nor fail to serve our best interests, because we realize that, like the leopard, we cannot change our skins, and so long as black is black, and white is white, the black man shall occupy a position of inferiority depending upon the justice of the great white race to lead and direct him. No race in the world is so just as to give to others a square deal in things economical, political, social and otherwise.
Marcus Garvey

People are gonna look up to me because I'm young, black, and female.
Aaliyah, VIBE Magazine

Rest at pale evening . . . A tall slim tree . . . Night coming tenderly Black like me.
Langston Hughes, Dream Variations

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.
Zora Neale Hurston

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.
Zora Neale Hurston

The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.
Marcus Garvey

The outside world told black kids when I was growing up that we weren't worth anything. But our parents said it wasn't so, and our churches and our schoolteachers said it wasn't so. They believed in us, and we, therefore, believed in ourselves.
Marian Wright Edelman

We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too... If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
Langston Hughes

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.
Langston Hughes

Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
Langston Hughes, Color

Whatever the white man has done, we have done, and often better.
Mary McLeod Bethune

You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.
James Weldon Johnson