Martin Luther King Jr.

-Activist, Leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement-

“Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness — justice.”

“Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community?” (1967), p. 109

“If a city has a 30 percent Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30 percent of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas.”

Interview in Playboy magazine, (1968)

Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe

-First President of Nigeria-

“There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity.”

“My Odyssey: An Autobiography,” (1970)

Harriet Tubman

-Abolitionist-

“I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.
I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.”

 ”Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience” (2003) by Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah, p. 299

Marcus Garvey

-Global Leader in the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism Movements-

“We are living in a world that is scientifically arranged in which everything done by those who control it is done through system; proper arrangement, proper organization, are among some of the organized methods used to control the world.  The weaker peoples before were the Chinese, the East Indians and the Negroes.  The Chinese have organized national resistance; the East Indians have also organized national resistance.  Therefore, only the Negro who is exposed to the most ruthless exploitation, and is left to be exploited in the future.  What will become of the Negro in another five hundred years if he does not organize now to develop and to protect himself? The answer is that he will be exterminated for the purpose of making room for the other races that will be strong enough to hold their own against the opposition of all and sundry.”

“It is unfortunate that we should find ourselves at this time the only disorganized group. Others have had the advantage of organization for centuries, so what seems to them unnecessary, from a racial point of view, becomes necessary to us, who have had to labor all along under the disadvantage of being scattered without a racial aim or purpose.”

“The traitor of other races is generally confined to the mediocre or irresponsible individual, but, unfortunately, the traitors among the Negro race are generally to be found among the men with the highest place in education and society, the fellows who call themselves leaders.”

“Message to the people: The Course of African Philosophy,” (1986)

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