"The poor Negro always remembered himself as an ex-slave and used this as the basis of any dealings with the mainstream of American society. The middle class black man bases his whole existence on the hopeless hypothesis that no one is supposed to remember that for almost three hundred years there was slavery in America, that the white man was a master, the black man a slave. This knowledge, however, is at the root of the legitimate black culture of this country. It is this knowledge, with its attendant muses of self-division, self-hatred, stoicism, and finally quixotic optimism, that informs the most meaningful of Afro-American music."
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Activists from the United StatesCivil rights activistsShort story writers from the United StatesPoets from the United StatesPlaywrights from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963), p. 136
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Amiri_Baraka
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Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka (October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an African-American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism.
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