RBG Quotable Elders and Ancestors

1. RBG Blakademics Febuary, 2011
"I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if they had known they
were slaves."
Harriet Tubman
"The events which transpired five thousand years ago; Five years ago or five minutes
ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now; five years From now or
five thousand years from now. All history is a current event."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
"No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow."
Alice Walker
QUOTABLE ELDERS AND ANCESTORS Page 1

2. RBG Blakademics Febuary, 2011
"First, my people must be taught the knowledge of self. Then and only then will they be
able to understand others and that which surrounds them. Anyone who does not have a
knowledge of self is considered a victim of either amnesia or unconsciousness and is
not very competent. The lack of knowledge of self is a prevailing condition among my
people here in America. Gaining the knowledge of self makes us unite into a great unity.
Knowledge of self makes you take on the great virtue of learning."
Honorable Elijah Muhammad
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just
what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of
injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they
are resisted with either words or blow, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed
by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass
"African-Americans have not yet learn that no other people have continued worshipping
another's God, especially their slave master's god or gods and freed themselves from
cultural and physical genocide. Why should Africans and African-Americans be the only
exception to this historic reality?"
Dr. Ben
"Freedom is to come to the Negro, not as a bequest, but as a conquest."
Carter G. Woodson
"Judaism, Christianity & Islam are innovations on fragments from the periphery of the
African cultural and spiritual system."
Professor James Small
"Whoever controls the images, controls your self-esteem, self-respect and self-
development. Whoever controls the history, controls the vision."
Dr. Leonard Jeffries
"The thing to do is to get organized; keep separated and you will be exploited, you will
be robbed, you will be killed. Get organized and you will compel the world to respect
you."
Marcus Garvey
"Remain separated and you will suffer; Together we are invincible !"
Haywood Barber, Sr.
"A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Those who seek temporary security rather than basic liberty deserve neither...
Queen Mother Moore
QUOTABLE ELDERS AND ANCESTORS Page 2

3. RBG Blakademics Febuary, 2011
"Sure there are a few good whites just as much as there are a few bad Blacks. However
what we are concerned here with is group attitudes and group politics. The exception
does not make a lie or the rule - it merely substantiates it."
Steve Biko
"I started with this idea in my head, "there's two things I've got a right to....death or
liberty?."
Harriet Tubman
"You're not an African because you're born in Africa. You're an African because Africa is
born in you. It's in your genes.... your DNA....your entire biological make up. Whether
you like it or not, that's the way it is. However, if you were to embrace this truth with
open arms....my, my, my....what a wonderful thing."
Marimba Ani
"To illuminate our real African History, to clarify our African Present, to brilliantly project
our African Future."
Mama Kefa Nephthys
"Truth crush to earth will rise again stronger than ever."
Dr. Leonard Jeffries
"I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call
myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner."
Malcolm X
"Ignore the ignorance of the ignorant"
Unknown
"What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce at the output end of the process
real Black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society."
Steve Biko
"I grew up like a neglected weed, ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Now
that I've been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is."
Harriet Tubman
"Two wrongs don't make a right....but it makes things even."
Lana "Isis" Drakes
"The only protection against injustice in man is power.....physical, financial and
scientific."
Marcus Garvey
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4. RBG Blakademics Febuary, 2011
"Win or lose, we win by raising the issues."
Charlotta Bass
"The most disastrous aspect of colonization which you are the most relunctant to
release from your mind is their colonization of the image of God."
Dr. Frances Cress-Welsing
"Peace if possible, War if necessary."
Dr. Khallid A. Muhammad
"My bones are tired. Not tired of struggling, but tired of oppression."
Queen Mother Moore
"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who
prepare for it today."
Malcolm X
"Powerful people never educate powerless people in what they need that they can use
to take the power away from powerful people; it's too much to expect. If I was in power, I
would not educate people in how to take my powers away."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
"I never ran my train off the track. And I never lost a passenger"
Harriet Tubman
"...education has but one honorable purpose, one alone, everything else is a waste of
time......that is to train the student to be a proper handler of power."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
"Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally
together with his brothers around the cause of their operation - the blackness of their
skin - and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind
them to perpetual servitude."
Steve Biko
"One is fully conscious when he or she is the results of having been informed and
instructed by the experience of his or her ancestors and use that knowledge to master,
understand and become able to create institutions that allow him or her to live in
harmony with the rest of nature and the universe."
Professor James Small
"Just because a cat has kittens in the oven, that doesn't make them biscuits."
Malcolm X
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5. RBG Blakademics Febuary, 2011
"God created black people and black people created style."
George C. Wolfe
"For the 'human race' to get along sounds like a wonderful thing......yet and still, Africans
as a people globally must first get along. Then and only then can we realistically get
along truthfully with any other race. Anything other than that......you're just fooling
yourself."
Unknown
"The Lord who told me to take care of my people meant me to do it just as long as I live,
and so I did what he told me."
Harriet Tubman
"Every form of true education trains the student in self-reliance"
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do
not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will
stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In
fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes
it necessary"
Carter G. Woodson
"African people need to stop shouting 'nationtime' until they are clear about the
responsibilities of running a nation."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
"No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those
who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant."
Frederick Douglass
"Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research."
Malcolm X
"Look at you....chasing your tail....running after the dollar bill as if it's going to solve your
problems personally or collectively as a people. 'Black America' is in the top 10 list of
richest nations in the world. Still....look at us. Disrespected, mistreated and down
trodden to say the least. Why? Because we don't study our past and present to create a
better future with our resources. We have to study our history....It's mandatory."
Lloyd "Amen-Ra" Spivey
QUOTABLE ELDERS AND ANCESTORS Page 5

6. RBG Blakademics Febuary, 2011
"History is a clock people use to tell their historical culture and political time of the day.
It's a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. The
history tells them where they have been, where they are and what they are. But most
importantly history tells a people where they still must go and what they still must be"
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
The economic philosophy of black nationalism only means that our people need to be
re-educated into the importance of controlling the economy of the community in which
we live, which means that we won't have to constantly be involved in picketing and
boycotting other people in other communities in order to get jobs
Malcolm X
"Black Consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God's plan in
creating Black people black."
Steve Biko
"When you deal with the past, you're dealing with history, you're dealing actually with
the origin of a thing. When you know the origin, you know the cause It's impossible for
you and me to have a balanced mind in this society without going into the past, because
in this particular society, as we function and fit into it right now, we're such an underdog,
we're trampled upon, we're looked upon as almost nothing. Now if we don't go into the
past and find out how we got this way, we will think that we were always this way. And if
you think that you were always in the condition that you're in right now, it's impossible
for you to have too much confidence in yourself, you become worthless, almost nothing.
But when you go back into the past and find out where you once were, then you will
know that you once had attained a higher level, had made great achievements,
contributions to society, civilization, science, and so forth. And you know that if you once
did it you can do it again; you automatically get the incentive, the inspiration and the
energy necessary to duplicate what our forefathers did."
Malcolm X
"Our purpose in life is to leave a legacy for our children and our children's children. For
this reason, we must correct history that at present denies our humanity and self-
respect."
Queen Mother Moore
"Now consciousness, what is consciousness? Consciousness is being aware of one's
surroundings, recognizing the existence, truth or fact of something; being aware of the
very moment, the very instant that you are in; being aware of how you affect the human
social, political, and natural ecology you are a part of and how it affects you.
Consciousness is being informed and instructed through your groups peculiar culture on
the effects of the varied ecologies on your immediate and distant ancestors, and to be
aware of their interpretation of that experience."
Professor James Small
QUOTABLE ELDERS AND ANCESTORS Page 6

7. RBG Blakademics Febuary, 2011
"Billions of dollars a year is pumped into the propaganda machine to keep black people
ignorant of the truth about their history and condition."
Unknown
"The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is
not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with
you and your 'civilization'."
Booker T. Washington
"All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishments of an African empire, so
strong and powerful as to compel the respect of mankind, but we in our lifetime can so
work and act as to make the dream a possibility within another generation."
Marcus Garvey
"Love of self comes first. The one who loves everybody is the one who does not love
anyone."
Honorable Elijah Muhammad
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