Civil Rights Activists

"Other people have called me a "human rights" activist. I don't mind the label, but I don't think I'd go so far. It puts me on par with other extraordinary activists. I'm just an average guy with a bigger mouth than average."

"Too many Japanese believe that they can say whatever they like in Japanese ('that statement was for a domestic audience' is very often an excuse for gaffes), as though Japanese is some secret code.""

"Girls are the future mothers of the , it is important we focus on their wellbeing."

"We will miss her energy and her respectful concern for the world's most vulnerable."

"Her voice and her battles influenced the process of liberation and democratic rebirth in South Africa."

"We don't write our history. It has always been handed down to us orally by our elders."

"It is absurd to say that we Africans were not in Africa when white people first came. And secondly, The conqueror writes history. They came, they conquered and they wrote. Now, you don't expect people who came to invade us to write the truth about us. They will always write negative things about us. And they have to do that because they have to justify their invasions in all the countries."

"I didn’t have much, but I was always happy to share what I did have. It seemed like every African that came to New York City would show up at my apartment door at dinnertime, and I couldn’t turn them away. I wasn’t much older than any of them, but they started calling me ‘Mama Africa’ and the name stuck."

"In those years, when I came to the States, people were always asking me why I didn’t sing anymore. I’d tell them, ‘I sing all around the world—Asia, Africa, Europe—but if you don’t sing in the US, then you haven’t really made it.’ That’s why I’ll always be grateful to Paul Simon. He allowed me to bring my music back to my friends in this country."

"My concerts were canceled left and right. Speaking about South African Apartheid was fine, but they were suddenly afraid I might speak about American Apartheid, although I never did. Bookers told me that my shows would finance radical activities and [Reprise Records] told me they were not going to honor my recording contract. I didn’t say anything, but if I was married to a troublemaker, I must be a troublemaker. I’d already lived in exile for 10 years, and the world is free, even if some of the countries in it aren’t, so I packed my bags and left."

"When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa."

"I will probably die singing."

"I always wanted to leave home. I never knew they were going to stop me from coming back. Maybe, if I knew, I never would have left. It is kind of painful to be away from everything that you've ever know. Nobody will know the pain of exile until you are in exile. No matter where you go, there are times when people show you kindness and love, and there are times when they make you know that you are with them but not of them. That's when it hurts."

"African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West."

"It's because they want to sound like Americans. I'd like to see them develop our music and sing it their way, but they think sounding American is going to take them higher, but it is not. They have beautiful voices, but they want to sound like Whitney Houston. You can't beat people like that at their own game. And they can't beat me at mine, either!"

"[W]hen the President's visitors came to Guinea, we were all called on to go and entertain them. I've never seen a country that did what Sékou Touré did for artists. Even in South Africa today we are not nurtured like that."

"It was not a ban from the government. It was a cancellation by people who felt I should not be with Stokely because he was a rebel to them. I didn't care about that. He was somebody I loved, who loved me, and it was my life."

"[Belafonte] was a good teacher and looked after me. He said, 'You have such great talent, you must try not to be a tornado - be like a submarine. It was good advice when I found myself speaking at the UN Committee Against Apartheid and then the UN General Assembly."

"[Belafonte]'d take me to perform for Martin Luther King's cause. But when they were marching I did not take part, because I was not a citizen"

"Belafonte sent his people to pick me up and I went back and shook his hand, then went back to my little flat. I was very happy to have met a president of the United States - little me!"

"I'm not a political singer. I don't know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us — especially the things that hurt us."

"I still don't know why they banned me" she says. "I said to them, 'What did I do? I never killed anybody. I was never arrested for anything bad, so why can't I go home?."

"That was the only time my mother saw me on stage. At one point in the play I am strangled and my mother jumped from her seat and screamed: 'No. You will not get away with murder. You cannot do this to my daughter.' Friends explained to her that this was not for real — that we were acting. But she made such a fuss. Everyone was so embarrassed. On stage my heart sank."

"I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed with a strength much greater than my size, so I might cope with the weight of racism that crushes my spirit."

"The man at the desk took my passport. He did not speak to me. He took a rubber stamp and slammed it down. Then he walked away. I picked up my passport. It was stamped 'Invalid'. 'They have done it,' I told myself. 'They have exiled me. I am not permitted to go home — not now, maybe not ever. My family, my home. Everything that has gone into the making of myself, gone'."

"The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer."

"In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land."

"The truth shall never be covered by a lie."

"Everywhere I performed in Brazil, I never saw black people. I only performed to white people. And they (the white people) said it's because they (the black people) can't afford to come here - it's too expensive. That is another form of keeping them from coming to where they can enjoy themselves together with white people. They keep them poor."

"The white man, where ever he is, whether he is in the majority or the minority, he rules. It just proves to everyone that we have to keep fighting."

"I have stage contracts for the next 18 months, and I shall go on with them whatever he says."

"France made me what I am. I will be grateful forever. The people of Paris have given me everything. They have given me their hearts, and I have given them mine. I am ready, captain, to give them my life. You can use me as you wish."

"She broke down barriers … She became part of the hearts and minds of French people ... Josephine Baker, you enter the Pantheon because while you were born American, deep down there was no one more French than you."

"Josephine Baker is a St. Louis washwoman’s daughter who stepped out of a Negro burlesque show into a life of adulation and luxury in Paris during the booming 1920s. In sex appeal to jaded Europeans of the jazz-loving type, a Negro wench always has a head start. The particular tawny tint of tall and stringy Josephine Baker’s bare skin stirred French pulses. But to Manhattan theatre-goers last week, she was just a slightly buck-toothed young Negro woman whose figure might be matched in any nightclub show, whose dancing and singing could be topped practically anywhere outside France."

"Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood."

"I believe in action. … I believe in doing rather than talking. All my life I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice. This is why I traveled all over the world to adopt 11 youngsters."

"I want you to know that this is the happiest day of my entire life. And as you all must know, I have had a very long life and I'm sixty years old. The results today of seeing you all together is a sight for sore eyes. You're together as salt and pepper just as you should be. Just as I've always wanted you to be and peoples of the world have always wanted you to be. You are a united people at last because without unity there cannot be any victory. You see, I'm glad. I'm glad that in my homeland, in my homeland where I was born in love and respect, I'm glad to see this day come to pass. This day, because you are on the eve of complete victory, and tomorrow, time will do the rest. ... Continue on. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you."

"I cannot see that I did anything extraordinary to merit this honor. Everything was just as it had to be.""

"First, I want to do what I can to help win the war and thus perform whatever duty I can for my native land. Second, I want to help those of my own race. I am doing all I can to help win the war effort and to make people generally more appreciative and kinder to my race."

"Father, Father Abraham, To-day look on us from above; On us, the offspring of thy faith, The children of thy Christ-like love."

"Whereas James Weldon Johnson believed that the recognition of an African American literary tradition would end racism in the United States, I believe that the recognition of Afro-Latin@ poetry will bring to light new structures of racism that have emerged and entrenched themselves as this country has become increasingly multi-cultural and multi-ethnic...Latin@s have been at the center of African American verse since its inception, as evidenced by Weldon Johnson's discussion of and admiration for black poets in Latin America. Likewise, connections between Harlem Renaissance poets and Afro-Latin American poets are numerous. This is an artistic connection that has grown within the United States"

"Young man—Young man—Your arm’s too short to box with God."

"Find Sister Caroline... And she's tired— She's weary— Go down, Death, and bring her to me."

"This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image."

"With his head in his hands, God thought and thought, Till he thought: I'll make me a man!"

"And God smiled again, And the rainbow appeared, And curled itself around his shoulder."

"So God stepped over to the edge of the world And He spat out the seven seas; He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed; He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled; And the waters above the earth came down, The cooling waters came down."

"And God stepped out on space, And He looked around and said, "I'm lonely— I'll make me a world.""

"Some men enjoy the constant strife Of days with work and worry rife, But that is not my dream of life: I think such men are crazy. For me, a life with worries few, A job of nothing much to do, Just pelf enough to see me through: I fear that I am lazy."

"And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,— "O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief.""