A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.

When I was in prison, I read an article - don't be shocked when I say I was in prison. You're still in prison. That's what America means: prison.

Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life.

Give us some separate territory in this country where our people can go and do something for ourselves. And provide us with everything that we need to keep that new territory going, until we are self-sufficient.

The same thing that Uncle Tom did on the plantation before [Abe] Lincoln issued the so-called Emancipation Proclamation.I have no thinking on the matter. But he's teaching the black people to suffer peacefully, patiently, until the white man makes up his mind that you're a human being the same as he.

A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.

The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites.