If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I am not an enemy of the Negro. We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have.
Every intelligent person whose life has been passed in a slaveholding State, and who has carefully observed the character and capacity of the African race, will see that a general and sudden emancipation would be absolute ruin to the Negroes, as well as to the white population.
Negroes must be free in order to be equal, and they must be equal in order to be free... Men cannot win freedom unless they win equality. They cannot win equality unless they win freedom.
Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples' democracies.
Up, you mighty race, accomplish what you will.
I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.
If the leading Negro classes cannot assume and bear the uplift of their own proletariat, they are doomed for all time. It is not a case of ethics; it is a plain case of necessity. The method by which this may be done is, first, for the American Negro to achieve a new economic solidarity.
Every day of my life I walk with the idea that I am black, no matter how successful I am. And our success is tempered by that; you're successful in this way given the fact you are black, and most blacks don't get to that point.
Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.
We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.