It's such a Bore Being always Poor.

When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.

Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.

This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

There is no color line in death. I swear to the lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be! I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.