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"Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst."
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"Film and novel characters are often stereotyped, but racial stereotyping in many novels or films creates & encourages labelling, discrimination & racism."

"You get so used to being hit you find you're always waiting for it. (...) How can I say what it feels like? I don't know. I know everybody's in trouble and nothing is easy, but how can I explain to you what it feels like to be black when I don't understand it and don't want to and spend all my time trying to forget it? I don't want to hate anybody - but now maybe, I can't love anybody either - are we friends? Can we really be friends?"

"If only Al Sharpton were around, Lincoln would have known he was a victim of racism."

"By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching."

"The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy, and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes."

"We must treat the disease of racism. This means we must understand the disease."

"Not all 'whites' are racists. Not all racists are 'white."

"It's a scary world we live in when a person of color endorses a racist for president."
Explore more quotes by James Weldon Johnson

"It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree."

"When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make."

"Southern white people despise the Negro as a race, and will do nothing to aid in his elevation as such; but for certain individuals they have a strong affection, and are helpful to them in many ways."

"I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them."

"I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely."

"Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville."

"The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice."

"The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South."

"I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race."
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