If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.

We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas

Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.

Rest at pale evening... A tall slim tree... Night coming tenderly Black like me