Oppression and Slavery

Oppression and slavery is supposed to be a thing of the past. What did these famous Blacks feel about these injustices?

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.
Huey Newton, In Defense of Freedom

As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.
Marian Anderson

I have always felt it was a handicap for oppressed peoples to depend so largely upon a leader, because unfortunately in our culture, the charismatic leader usually becomes a leader because he has found a spot in the public limelight.
Ella Baker, Developing Community Leadership

I never doubted my ability, but when you hear all your life you're inferior, it makes you wonder if the other guys have something you've never seen before. If they do, I'm still looking for it.
Hank Aaron

I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice, for nothing else makes one so blind and narrow.
Booker T. Washington

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.
Toni Morrison, Kindred

Never look down on anybody unless you helping him up.
Jesse Jackson

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.
Booker T. Washington

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.
Maya Angelou

Prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.
Marian Anderson

Slavery is a condition imposed upon individuals or races not sufficiently able to protect or defend themselves, and so long as a race or people expose themselves to the danger of being weak, no one can tell when they will be reduced to slavery.
Marcus Garvey, The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey

The worst thing about that kind of prejudice... is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds you self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.
Nina Simone

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness.
Eldridge Cleaver

There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.
Nikki Giovanni

They subjugate first, if the weaker peoples will stand for it; then exploit, and if they will not stand for SUBJUGATION nor EXPLOITATION, the other recourse is EXTERMINATION.
Marcus Garvey

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.
Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
Booker T. Washington

You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.
Lena Horne