African Americans

"Challenges make you discover things about yourself you never really knew. They are what make the instrument stretch what make you go beyond the norm"

"Just stick with it. Just stick with it. There's always a reason why you keep going in the direction you chose to go in."

"Syringes are probably less of a problem than vials and stoppers. If I was wanting to pay attention to what can go wrong (for COVID-19 vaccination), it'd be that."

"Chicago is a living testimony that the counterinsurgency continues in America, just as it does in Oakland, in St. Petersburg, Florida, in Berkeley, California, in Wichita, Kansas and throughout the U.S. This government wages a war against oppressed people which has now come to be known as a “war on drugs.” This counterinsurgency, this so-called “war on drugs,” criminalizes a whole class of people, black people in particular. This capitalistic government uses the drugs it has put into our community as a justification for the attacks on the community."

"My friend John Lewis is surely smiling down on his beloved Georgia this morning, as people across the state carried forward the baton that he and so many others passed down to them. I want to congratulate Reverend Raphael Warnock on his election as Georgia’s next U.S. Senator — and while we're still waiting on final results in the other runoff, is clear that last night’s showing... is a testament to the power of the tireless and often unheralded work of grassroots organizing..."

"Senator-elect Warnock has actually been a part of the same movement that has helped to catapult him to the U.S. Senate as the prior board chair for the New Georgia Project, through work that he’s done through the Ebenezer Baptist Church around public health or through ending mass incarceration back in June of 2019. He was a part of a group of multifaith leaders who held an ending mass incarceration conference at Ebenezer Baptist Church. And so, we saw imams, we saw Jewish faith leaders, we saw rabbis, we saw preachers and pastors from across the South and across the country, come together to address these very critical issues. So, that’s the type of convener he’s already been. And that’s what has resonated with folks on the ground who are doing the work, because they’ve worked alongside him."

"Verlene Warnock spent her summers picking cotton and tobacco as a teen in Waycross, Georgia, in the 1950s before becoming a pastor. "Because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator," [Raphael] Warnock said... Her story was not uncommon. In the Jim Crow South, many poor Black people built savings by working in the fields because it was almost impossible for them to own land... At 82, Verlene Warnock still preaches at Bible and Prayer Ministries, her church in Savannah. And her son, the 11th of 12 children, is going to Congress."

"I need my neighbor's children to be okay so that my children will be okay. I need all of my neighbor's children to be okay; poor, inner-city children in Atlanta and poor children of Appalachia; I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza, I need Israelis and Palestinians, I need those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine, I need American children on both sides of the track to be okay! Because we are all God's children! And so let's stand together, let's work together, let's organize together, let's pray together, let's stand together, let's heal the land! God bless you! Keep the faith!"

"Doorknock for Warnock vote your Ossoff"

"Georgia voters sent the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church to the U.S. Senate. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior shepherd of the same congregation once led by Martin Luther King Jr., will become the first elected Black Democratic senator – not just from Georgia, but from the entire South. Without stepping outside his campaign headquarters, Warnock this morning was making the rounds on morning news shows."

"Raphael Warnock’s victory Tuesday night is historic, heralding a litany of firsts. In a Senate that remains almost solely the province of white men, he'll be the first Black Democrat from Georgia, the first Black Democrat from the South, the first Black pastor and only the second Black senator ever elected from a state below the Mason-Dixon line since Reconstruction... Warnock’s win... negates the longstanding, quietly kept idea that Black candidates don’t stand a chance running for the Senate in the South... Just seven African Americans have ever been elected to the Senate. Warnock will be the eighth. And though it was the New South that propelled Warnock into office, he preaches — and campaigns — from the old school, prophetic tradition, which criticizes America’s greatest societal ills. On the campaign trail, it was hard to separate the preacher from the politician. His stump speeches mirrored his sermons, interspersing calls for Medicaid expansion and criminal justice reform with allusions to scripture. Like Barack Obama, Warnock downplayed race on the campaign trail, running on a platform that appealed to a wide swath of the electorate. In addition to Black voters, Asian Americans and Latinos supported him and Jon Ossoff in droves during both the November and January elections. And he made a concerted effort to target rural and first-time voters, having already engaged the groups extensively as chair of the New Georgia Project, a position he held from 2017 until 2020."

"I want to say thank you. And I want to say thank you to my mother, who is here tonight. You’ll see her in a little while. But she grew up in the 1950s, in Waycross, Georgia, picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco. But tonight she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator."

"We were told that we couldn’t win this election, but tonight we proved that with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible. May my story be an inspiration to some young person who is trying to grasp and grab hold of the American dream. And so, Georgia, I am honored by the faith that you have shown in me. And I promise you this tonight: I am going to the Senate to work for all of Georgia, no matter who you cast your vote for in this election."

"I talked about how I intend to represent them, and my opponent was focused on how she would represent her own interest. And I think the folks heard that loud and clear. We’re dealing with folks that are facing eviction. People have been waiting for months for relief, and they saw politicians play the same old games last week. We should have already passed this $2,000 stimulus check, and I can’t wait to get to work."

"Because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator."

"In this moment in American history, Washington has a choice to make. In fact, all of us have a choice to make. Will we continue to divide, distract and dishonor one another, or will we love our neighbors as we love ourselves? Will we play political games while real people suffer, or will we win righteous fights together, standing shoulder to shoulder, for the good of Georgia, for the good of our country? Will we seek to destroy one another as enemies or heed the call towards the common good, building together what Dr. King called the “beloved community”? And so, to everyone out there struggling today, whether you voted for me or not, know this: I hear you. I see you. And every day I’m in the United States Senate, I will fight for you. I will fight for your family."

"I love him dearly."

"He's not the monster everybody thinks. He's a good person. He has a fantastic heart. He's giving and loving. And he's fun to be around. That's what I love about him – he always makes me laugh. All I want to do is laugh, really – and I do that with him."

"It was difficult growing up. We didn't have everything we wanted. We were used to two pairs of shoes for a school year. We used to go to church every day. I was one of those kids that had more church clothes than school clothes."

"Over the course of decades, she has made it her mission to see that this day came. It was almost a singular mission. She has walked for miles and miles, literally and figuratively, to bring attention to Juneteenth, to make this day possible...when I think about someone like Miss Opal Lee, part of what I think about is our proximity to this period of history, right? Slavery existed for 250 years in this country, and it’s only not existed for 150. And, you know, the way that I was taught about slavery, growing up, in elementary school, we were made to feel as if it was something that happened in the Jurassic age, that it was the flint stone, the dinosaurs and slavery, almost as if they all happened at the same time. But the woman who opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture alongside the Obama family in 2016 was the daughter of an enslaved person — not the granddaughter or the great-granddaughter or the great-great-granddaughter. The daughter of an enslaved person is who opened this museum of the Smithsonian in 2016. And so, clearly, for so many people, there are people who are alive today who were raised by, who knew, who were in community with, who loved people who were born into intergenerational chattel bondage. And so, this history that we tell ourselves was a long time ago wasn’t, in fact, that long ago at all."

"I went to Galveston, Texas, in part, because I wanted to spend time with people who were the actual descendants of those who had been freed by General Gordon Granger’s General Order No. 3. And it was a really remarkable moment, because I was in this place, on this island, on this land, with people for whom Juneteenth was not an abstraction. It was not a performance. It was not merely a symbol. It was part of their tradition. It was part of their lineage. It was an heirloom that had been passed down, that had made their lives possible. And so, I think I gained a more intimate sense of what that holiday meant."

"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

"Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation, and a promise of a brighter morning to come. This is a day of profound — in my view — profound weight and profound power. A day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take — what I’ve long called “America’s original sin.” At the same time, I also remember the extraordinary capacity to heal, and to hope, and to emerge from the most painful moments and a bitter, bitter version of ourselves, but to make a better version of ourselves. You know, today, we consecrate Juneteenth for what it ought to be, what it must be: a national holiday."

"On June 19, 1865 — nearly nine decades after our Nation’s founding, and more than 2 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation — enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally received word that they were free from bondage. As those who were formerly enslaved were recognized for the first time as citizens, Black Americans came to commemorate Juneteenth with celebrations across the country, building new lives and a new tradition that we honor today. In its celebration of freedom, Juneteenth is a day that should be recognized by all Americans. And that is why I am proud to have consecrated Juneteenth as our newest national holiday... I call upon the people of the United States to acknowledge and celebrate the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of Black Americans, and commit together to eradicate systemic racism that still undermines our founding ideals and collective prosperity."

"I believe that, despite the fact that it is so dramatic and so beautiful and so inspiring and so stimulating, we will ultimately not be judged by our technology, we won't be judged by our design, we won't be judged by our intellect and reason. Ultimately, you judge the character of a society, not by how they treat their rich and the powerful and the privileged, but by how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated. Because it's in that nexus that we actually begin to understand truly profound things about who we are."

"I also believe that in many parts of this country, and certainly in many parts of this globe, that the opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice."

""The American criminal justice system... treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent," Bryan Stevenson told Democracy Now!"

"We have in this country this dynamic where we really don't like to talk about our problems. We don't like to talk about our history. And because of that, we really haven't understood what it's meant to do the things we've done historically. We're constantly running into each other. We're constantly creating tensions and conflicts. We have a hard time talking about race, and I believe it's because we are unwilling to commit ourselves to a process of truth and reconciliation."

"In the states of the Old South, we execute people -- where you're 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black, 22 times more likely to get it if the defendant is black and the victim is white -- in the very states where there are buried in the ground the bodies of people who were lynched."

"We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes."

"I've come to understand and to believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done. I believe that for every person on the planet. I think if somebody tells a lie, they're not just a liar. I think if somebody takes something that doesn't belong to them, they're not just a thief. I think even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer."

"It's interesting, this question of the death penalty. In many ways, we've been taught to think that the real question is, do people deserve to die for the crimes they've committed? And that's a very sensible question. But there's another way of thinking about where we are in our identity. The other way of thinking about it is not, do people deserve to die for the crimes they commit, but do we deserve to kill?"

"One of the most persistent, yet devastating myths is that slavery ended in 1865—persistent because it is so pervasive in the current of United States history and devastating because it establishes a benchmark from which African American progress is supposedly made."

"Enslaved workers transferred the legacy of poverty and oppression to their descendants because their status did not allow the acquisition of wealth. Moreover, the ability to share equitably in the nation’s wealth was stifled by laws that disavowed the historical reality that the status of the “enslaved workers” affected the status of their descendants. The use of the law as a tool to demand redress has not advanced the right of African Americans to that wealth because the legal technicalities of sovereign immunity, the statute of limitations, and other devices have worked to prevent African Americans from gaining access to it."

"But I do see you today. And I’m encouraged by what I see. I’m strengthened by what I see. I love what I see."

"I actually kissed a man in the film, but they took it out, they cut it. I think they got chicken."

"I wasn't put on this earth to act. I was put on this earth to share and to be an example of the power and wisdom and grace and mercy of God in my life."

"If you don’t love your fellow man, women, person, then you don’t have anything."

"I'm an actor, not a politician. I don't represent a race. I don't represent any group. I just represent the character I'm playing at the time."

"Your body doesn't have the energy it needs to filter toxins, causing it to believe that it has an infection, so it's always inflamed. You create antibodies that attack your glands, so you have to eat clean."

"There's no one way to be black. I'm black the way I know how to be. You have no idea who I am. I am black. I'm raising black men. Don't you ever think you can look at me and address me with such disdain."

"Black men must ask themselves a difficult question. How can a white society characterized by Black enslavement, colonialism, and imperialism provide the normative conception of women for Black society? How can the sphere of the woman, as defined by white men, be free from the evils and oppressions that are found in the white society? The important point is that in matters relative to the relationship between the sexes, Black men have accepted without question the patriarchal structures of the white society as normative for the Black community. How can a Black minister preach in a way that advocates St. Paul’s dictum concerning women while ignoring or repudiating his dictum concerning slaves? Many Black women are enraged as they listen to “liberated” Black men speak about the “place of women” in words and phrases similar to those of the very white oppressors they condemn."

"If the church ... does not make God's liberation of the oppressed central in its mission and proclamation, how can it rest easy with a condemned criminal as the dominant symbol of its message?"

"By becoming poor and entrusting divine revelation to a carpenter from Nazareth, God makes clear where one has to be in order to hear the divine word and experience divine presence."

"The number-one cause that prevents , that promotes , that protects police lawlessness, is a culprit called the Fraternal Order of Police. They're the organized guardians of continuous police lawlessness, of police murder and police brutality. The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police is the most rabid, racist body of criminal lawlessness by police in the land. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the Ku Klux Klan then and the Ku Klux Klan now."

"The very use of the term Black Studies is by implication an indictment of American and Western European scholarship. It makes bold assertion that what we have heretofore called ‘Objective’ intellectual activities were actually white studies in perspective and content; and that a corrective bias, a shift in emphasis, is needed, even if something called ‘truth’ is set as the goal. To use a technical sociological term, the present body of knowledge has an ideological element in it, and a counterideology is needed. Black Studies supply that counterideology."

"It was very obvious that Vice President Biden cared, as he extended to Jacob Jr. a sense of humanity, treating him as a person worthy of consideration and prayer"

"Jacob Jr. told Sen. Harris that he was proud of her, and the senator told Jacob that she was also proud of him and how he is working through his pain. Jacob Jr. assured her that he was not going to give up on life for the sake of his children."

"He talked about how nothing was going to defeat him. How whether he walked again or not, he was not going to give up."

"It was very obvious that Vice President Biden cared, as he extended to Jacob Jr. a sense of humanity, treating him as a person worthy of consideration and prayer"