People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

I will no longer take anyone's word for my experience.

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.

I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.