Racial violence only becomes more vicious in its expression. It will not abate or disappear, not anytime soon,
If a bird could be taught limericks, a slave might be taught to remember as well. Merely glancing at the size of the skulls told you that a nigger possessed a bigger brain than a bird.
You should have gone yourself, you ask for a Coke and they come back with orange drink. No one understands the martyrdom of the volunteers for the trip to food concession.
You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other. Nickel
To think of those Nickel nights where the only sounds were tears and insects, how you could sleep in a room crammed with sixty boys and still understand that you were the only person on earth. Everybo...
There were plenty of things in the world that deserved to stay dead, yet they walked.
Then it comes, always—the overseer’s cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude. The
The words from across the ocean were beaten out of them over time. For simplicity, to erase their identities, to smother uprisings.
The whip was the standard punishment for disobedience. Running away was a transgression so large that the punishment enveloped every generous soul on her brief tour of freedom.
The boys knew to hide their enthusiasm over little kid things that still had an allure.
The I-Remember-Whensters lumbered in with their musty catalogues of the bygone, dragging IVs of distilled nostalgia behind them on creaky wheels,
Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation.
Sarsaparilla boiled for one of Sybil’s tonics, overpowering the aroma of the roasting meat. Cora
Poetry and prayer put ideas in people’s heads that got them killed,
Poetry and prayer put ideas in people’s heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.
On one end there was who you were before you went underground, and on the other end a new person steps out into the light.
Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us.
It occurred to her one night that she was one of the vengeful monsters they were scared of: She had killed a white boy. She might kill one of them next. And because of that fear, they erected a new sc...
It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.
If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America.