African Americans

"I just tell you, I'm not a big FEMA fan."

"I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses. Get every dog-gone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans … This is a major, major, major deal. I can't emphasize that enough.""

"The rise of the Earth's temperature, causing sea level increases that could add up to one foot over the next 30 years, threatens the very existence of New Orleans."

"As we remember Abbott and Costello, As Laurel and Hardy can never die, Rowan and Martin will not be forgotten, But baby, we sure gonna try."

"Some of these guys are so violent that it is hard for witnesses to come forward, and they get involved in repeat criminal activities, so it is unfortunate that they had to die, but it did kind of end the cycle that we were struggling with."

"They found an orangutan suffering from a hernia, Fed him poison from a rattlesnake bite, Gave him the soothing voice of a wild hyena, And he's 'Man of the Week' tonight!""

"Do I worry about it? Somewhat. It's not good for us, but it also keeps the New Orleans brand out there, and it keeps people thinking about our needs and what we need to bring this community back. So it is kind of a two-edged sword."

"It's all right. You guys in New York City can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later, so let's be fair."

"This economic pie that is getting ready to explode before our eyes is going to be shared equally."

"New Orleans was a chocolate city before Katrina. It is going to be a chocolate city after. How is that divisive?"

"You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about."

"I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day...This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

"As we think about rebuilding New Orleans, surely, God is mad at America. He's sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroying and putting stress on this country. Surely, he's not approval [sic] of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But, surely, he is upset at black America, also."

"I know that my Redeemer lives. Thank God I love humanity, complexion doesn't interest me one single a bit."

"Although Professor Carver impresses every one who meets him with the extent of his knowledge in the matter of plant life, he is quite the most modest man I have ever met."

"Professor Carver, like the other men I have mentioned, is of unmixed African blood, and is one of the most thoroughly scientific men of the Negro race with whom I am acquainted. Whenever anyone who takes a scientific interest in cotton. Whenever any one who takes a scientific interest in cotton growing, or in the natural history of this part of the world, comes to visit Tuskegee, he invariably seeks out and consults Professor Carver."

"His work was his life, and by not diluting it with wrathful forays against the ignorance of prejudice he was able to make his own unique and most vital contribution to racial amity."

"If we were asked what living man had the worst start and the best finish, we would say, Dr. Carver. It's a great loss to us that we have no one like him in England."

"Dr. George Washington Carver was one of the wonders of this age... Those who believe and teach that a man's heritage determines his spiritual, mental and physical traits will be hard put to explain the source of Dr. Carver's amazing intellect."

"Dr. Carver left a legacy of hope and beacon light pointing to opportunities of the future... This Negro scientist who was born of slave parents succeeded by hard work and exalted vision to the stature of one of the most outstanding agricultural research scientists in the world.""

"[He] achieved a place as one of the foremost scientists of all the world for all time."

"The scientific discoveries and experiments of Dr. Carver have done more to alleviate the one-crop agricultural system in the South than any other thing that has been done in the history of the United States."

"From Carver's small laboratory at Tuskegee came formulas in agricultural chemistry that enriched the entire Southland, indeed the whole of America and the world."

"When Dr. Carver died, the United States lost one of her finest Christian gentleman. He was a good friend of my father and mother and I had known him for forty-seven years. To the world, he was known as a scientist. Those who knew him best, however, realized that this outstanding characteristic was a strong feeling of the eminence of God. Everything he was and did found its origin in that strong ans continuous feeling."

"Although a few refer to George Washington Carver, whose research in agricultural products helped to revive the economy of the South when the throne of King Cotton began to totter, they ignore the contribution of Norbert Rillieux, whose invention of an evaporating pan revolutionized the process of sugar refining. How many people know that the multimillion-dollar United Shoe Machinery Company developed from the shoe-lasting machine invented in the last century by a Negro from Dutch Guiana, Jan Matzeliger, or that Granville T. Woods, an expert in electric motors, whose many patents speeded the growth and improvement of the railroads at the beginning of this century, was a Negro?"

"From crippling circumstance, George Washington Carver made for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of science."

"From oppressive and crippling surroundings, George Washington Carver lifted his searching, creative mind to the ordinary peanut, and found therein extraordinary possibilities for goods and products unthinkable by minds of the past."

"The versatility of his genius and his achievements in diverse branches of the arts and sciences were truly amazing. The versatility of his genius All mankind is the beneficiary of his discoveries in the field of agricultural chemistry. The things which he achieved in the face of early handicaps will for all time afford an inspiration of youth everywhere. The things, which he achieved in the face of early handicaps, will for all time afford an inspiration of youth everywhere. I count it a great privilege to have met Dr. Carver and to have talked with him at Tuskegee on the occasion of my visit to the institute, which was the scene of his long and distinguished labors."

"He is better known as the greatest Negro scientist alive, the man who pioneered new uses for Southern agricultural products, developed 285 new uses for the peanut, got 118 products, including vinegar, molasses and shoe blacking, from the South’s surplus sweet potatoes."

"Professor Carver, who teaches scientific agriculture, botany, agricultural chemistry, etc., at Tuskegee, is, as regards complexion and features, an absolute Negro; but in the cut of his clothes, the accent of his speech, the soundness of his science, he might be professor of botany, not at Tuskegee, but at Oxford or Cambridge. Any European botanist of distinction, after ten minutes' conversation with this man, instinctively would treat him as a man on a level with himself."

"It is necessary for our generation to repudiate Carver and all the lesser-known black leaders who cooperated with the white design to keep their people down. We need none of their kind today. Someday, when, God willing, the struggle is over and its bitterness has faded, those men and women may be rediscovered and given their just due for working, as best they could see to do in their time and place, for their brothers and sisters. But at present their influence is pernicious, and where they still control education, in the North or the South, they must be replaced with educators who are ready to demand full equality for the oppressed races and fight for it at any cost."

"My attitude toward life was also my attitude toward science. Jesus said one must be born again, must become as a little child. He must let no laziness, no fear, no stubbornness keep him from his duty. If he were born again he would see life from such a plane he would have the energy not to be impeded in his duty by these various sidetrackers and inhibitions. My work, my life, must be in the spirit of a little child seeking only to know the truth and follow it. My purpose alone must be God's purpose - to increase the welfare and happiness of His people. Nature will not permit a vacuum. It will be filled with something. Human need is really a great spiritual vacuum which God seeks to fill... With one hand in the hand of a fellow man in need and the other in the hand of Christ, He could get across the vacuum and I became an agent. Then the passage, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me," came to have real meaning. As I worked on projects which fulfilled a real human need forces were working through me which amazed me. I would often go to sleep with an apparently insoluble problem. When I woke the answer was there. Why, then, should we who believe in Christ be so surprised at what God can do with a willing man in a laboratory? Some things must be baffling to the critic who has never been born again."

"Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. Keep your thoughts free from hate, and you need have no fear from those who hate you."

"When our thoughts — which bring actions — are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white, we are in a living hell. That is as real as hell will ever be."

"My beloved friend, keep your hand in that of the Master, walk daily by His side, so that you may lead others into the realms of true happiness, where a religion of hate, (which poisons both body and soul) will be unknown, having in its place the "Golden Rule" way, which is the "Jesus Way" of life, will reign supreme. Then, we can walk and talk with Jesus momentarily, because we will be attuned to His will and wishes, thus making the Creation story of the world non-debatable as to its reality. God, my beloved friend is infinite the highest embodiment of love. We are finite, surrounded and often filled with hate. We can only understand the infinite as we loose the finite and take on the infinite."

"I do not feel capable of writing a single word of counsel to those dear young people, more than to say that my heart goes out to every one of them, regardless of the fact that I have never seen them and may never do so. I want them to find Jesus, and make Him a daily, hourly, and momently part of themselves. O how I want them to get the fullest measure of happiness and success out of life. I want them to see the Great Creator in the smallest and apparently the most insignificant things about them. How I long for each one to walk and talk with the Great Creator through the things he has created. How I thank God every day that I can walk and talk with Him."

"Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth."

"I love to think of nature as unlimited broadcasting stations, through which God speaks to us every day, every hour and every moment of our lives, if we will only tune in and remain so."

"More and more as we come closer and closer in touch with nature and its teachings are we able to see the Divine and are therefore fitted to interpret correctly the various languages spoken by all forms of nature about us."

"The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agricultural problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East or West."

"My dear Mr. President: I was sitting in the audience at the Summit Meeting of Negro Leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience. On hearing you say this, I felt like standing up and saying, "Oh no! Not again. " I respectfully remind you sir, that we have been the most patient of all people. When you said we must have self-respect, I wondered how we could have self-respect and remain patient considering the treatment accorded us through the years. 17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change. We want to enjoy now the rights that we feel we are entitled to as Americans. This we cannot do unless we pursue aggressively goals which all other Americans achieved over 150 years ago. As the chief executive of our nation, I respectfully suggest that you unwittingly crush the spirit of freedom in Negroes by constantly urging forbearance and give hope to those pro-segregation leaders like Governor Faubus who would take from us even those freedoms we now enjoy. Your own experience with Governor Faubus is proof enough that forbearance and not eventual integration is the goal the pro-segregation leaders seek. In my view, an unequivocal statement backed up by action such as you demonstrated you could take last fall in dealing with Governor Faubus if it became necessary, would let it be known that America is determined to provide -- in the near future for Negroes -- the freedoms we are entitled to under the constitution, Respectfully yours, Jackie Robinson"

"Jackie Robinson is the best I've seen. Robinson is the perfect blend of ball player. He has creativeness [sic] and imagination. Every move he makes from the minute he steps onto the field is designed to beat the other club. He's constantly asking himself, at bat or on the bases, "what can I do to beat the other guy?" That's the kind of ball player that wins pennants."

"For me as a kid, growing up minutes from Ebbets Field, the Dodgers weren't a team-they were a way of life. Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, Don Newcombe, Duke Snider, and Jackie Robinson were not only our heroes; they were part of our family."

"You can hate a man for many reasons, his color isn't one of them."

"When things look dark, void, and altogether hopeless to the colored youth of America..., when they need an inspiring thought that should urge them onward to the road of achievement despite forbidding obstacles, they will only need to read of and reflect upon the remarkable career of Jackie Robinson."

"Today we must balance the tears of sorrow with the tears of joy. Mix the bitter with the sweet in death and life. Jackie as a figure in history was a rock in the water, creating concentric circles and ripples of new possibility. He was medicine. He was immunized by God from catching the diseases that he fought. The Lord's arms of protection enabled him to go through dangers seen and unseen, and he had the capacity to wear glory with grace. Jackie's body was a temple of God. An instrument of peace. We would watch him disappear into nothingness and stand back as spectators, and watch the suffering from afar. The mercy of God intercepted this process Tuesday and permitted him to steal away home, where referees are out of place, and only the supreme judge of the universe speaks...Jackie, as a figure in history, was a rock in the water, hitting concentric circles and ripples of new possibility...He didn't integrate baseball for himself. He infiltrated baseball for all of us, seeking and looking for more oxygen for black survival, and looking for new possibility. His feet on the baseball diamond made it more than a sport, a narrative of achievement more than a game. For many of us ... it was a gift of new expectations...He helped us to ascend from misery, to hope, on the muscles of his arms and the meaning of his life."

"I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded."

"This is a particularly good year to campaign against the evils of bigotry, prejudice, and race hatred because we have witnessed the defeat of enemies who tried to found a mastery of the world upon such cruel and fallacious policy."

"I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world."

"The kid was great. He was the difference. The Yankees certainly didn't miss Joe DiMaggio out there in center field today—and won't as long as that guy's around."