The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.

The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.

One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.

There must always be a remedy for wrong and injustice if we only know how to find it.

Virtue knows no color line.

Those who commit the murders write the reports.

I am only a mouthpiece through which to tell the story of lynching and I have told it so often that I know it by heart. I do not have to embellish; it makes its own way.

A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.

The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.

The appetite grows for what it feeds on.

Bruised, beaten, shaken, weakened, tossed, thrown, lost, alone, heard, helped, healed, hope... it still works.

Some are professors and others are possessors.

Cause I don't appreciatePeople whoDon't appreciate

The break down for kids is communication. Music helps bring that bond.

The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

This is earth again, the earth where I've lived and now will live once more ... I've been to eternity and back. I know how the dead would feel to live again.

The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.

We wouldn't pay to rent and watch the same painful movie two hundred fifty times, but somehow we let our mind replay a bad memory over and over, each time experiencing the same distress and shame.

I'm a size 8, and I feel proud of that, because it's healthy. I've never felt compelled to be a skinny actress.

If I have to hold a note for a long time, I imagine it as moving and spinning, for the note has to have life. In a way, a singer actually refreshes a note with every beat that it's held.