Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed...It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.
Nigger, you sure ought to be glad it was us you talked to that way. You’re a lucky bastard, ’cause if you’d said that to some other white man, you might’ve been a dead nigger now. I was learning rapid...
Men are inventing ideas every day to justify for themselves and others their actions and needs.
I knew what was wrong with me, but I could not correct it. The words and actions ofwhite people were baffling signs to me. I was living in a culture and not a civilization and Icould learn how that cu...
I listened, vaguely knowing now that I had committed some awful wrong that I could not undo, that I had uttered words I could not recall even though I ached to nullify them, kill them, turn back time...
There were many more folk ditties, some mean, others filthy, all of them cruel. No one ever thought of questioning our right to do this; our mothers and parents generally approved, either actively or...
These fantasies were no longer a reflection of my reaction to the white people, they were a part of my living, of my emotional life; they were a culture, a creed, a religion. The hostility of the whit...
Whether he’ll follow some gaudy, hysterical leader who’ll promise rashly to fill the void in him, or whether he’ll come to an understanding with the millions of his kindred fellow workers under trade-...
I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it
Over spring mountainsA star ends the paragraphOf a thunderstorm.
Sweep away the cloudsAnd let a dome of blue skyGive this sea a name!
Pale yellow sunshine fell through high windows and slashed the air.
Ought one to surrender to authority even if one believed that that authority was wrong? If the answer was yes, then I knew that I would always be wrong, because I could never do it. Then how could one...
Shaking hands I was doing something that I was to do countless times in the years to come: acting in conformity with what others expected of me even though, by the very nature and form of my life, I d...
If you think I’m telling tall tales, get chummy with some white cop who works in a Black Belt district and ask him for the lowdown. When
If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from hims...
In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed. Somewhe...
In shaking hands I was doing something that I was to do countless times in the years to come: acting in conformity with what others expected of me even though, by the very nature and form of life, I d...
They lived on the surface of their days; their smiles were surface smiles, and their tears were surface tears. Negroes lived a truer and deeper life than they, but I wished that Negroes, too, could li...
Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books...
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