Quote

I believe if the white and colored people could get together and be let alone, they would understand each other and consequently love each other.

The people of the North owe to the colored race a deep obligation that is no easy matter to fulfill.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

I think it's important for people of colour to have similar opportunities to white people; that's what is most important.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.

It's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is inevitable. What we, the black middle class have to do, is think of a strategy to avert that.

In closing I wish to say that while I was sorely beset by a number of white riders in my racing days, I have also enjoyed the friendship of countless thousands of white men whom I class as among my closest friends.

I maintain that the past record of my race is a true index of the feelings which today animate them. They bear toward their former masters no revengeful thoughts, no hatreds, no animosities. They aim not to elevate themselves by sacrificing one single interest of their white fellow-citizens.

What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.