Quotes from Carter G. Woodson


Sorted by Popularity


Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination.


The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers.


Our most widely known scholars have been trained in universities outside of the South.


They still have some money, and they have needs to supply. They must begin immediately to pool their earnings and organize industries to participate in supplying social and economic demands.


The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people.


One can cite cases of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists.


And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.


We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.


In the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent.


I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit.



Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority.


If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own.


This crusade is much more important than the anti- lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.


Negro banks, as a rule, have failed because the people, taught that their own pioneers in business cannot function in this sphere, withdrew their deposits.


The author takes the position that the consumer pays the tax, and as such every individual of the social order should be given unlimited opportunity to make the most of himself.


The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there.


Let us banish fear.


If Liberia has failed, then, it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery.


The different ness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess.