It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo.
Racism cannot be separated from capitalism.
As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.
To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.
What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively.
Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems.
Progressive art can assist people to learn what’s at work in the society in which they live.
Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence.
But at the same time you can’t...
It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals.
Poor people, people of color – especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.
There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.
A fair trial would have been no trial at all.
No march, movement, or agenda that defines manhood in the narrowest terms and seeks to make women lesser partners in this quest for equality can be considered a positive step.
You can’t criticize people for wanting to have a decent life or wanting to live decently.
I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late ’40’s and early ’50’s was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival.
We have been basically persuaded that we should not talk about racism.
Well for one, the 13th amendment to the constitution of the US which abolished slavery – did not abolish slavery for those convicted of a crime.
I think in black communities today we need to encourage a lot more cross racial organizing.