A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

We don't think that we're begging for anything. We think we're demanding what is ours by right.

The only persons who really changed history are those who changed men's thinking about themselves.

I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance's White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah's Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back — and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

To say it is not practical, one has to also admit that integration is not practical.

My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.

Whenever any group can vote in a bloc, and decide the outcome of elections, and it fails to do this, then that group is politically sick.