We Want Freedom (A Life in the Black Panther Party); Mumia Abu Jamal

"I started with this idea in my head, "There's two things I've got a right to, death or liberty." - Harriet Tubman

"They were looking for an organization that would represent their collective voice.  Even at this early stage, there existed positions that would later re-emerge espoused and reflected by the Black Panther Party: a questioning of the status quo; a sense of alienation not only from the US government, but, reflecting a class divide, also from the elite of the Civil Rights movement; and the germ of recognizing the importance of the international arena to the lives and destinies of Blacks in America." p. 3

"The mass of the people struggle against the same poverty, flounder about making the same gestures and with their shrunken bellies outline what has been called the geography of hunger.  It is an under-developed world, a world inhuman in its poverty; but also a world without engineers and without administrators.  Confronting this world, the European nations sprawl, ostentatiously opulent.  This European opulence is literally scandalous, for it has been founded on slavery, it has been nourished with the blood of slaves and it comes directly from the soil and the subsoil of that under-developed world.  The well-being and the progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians, and the yellow races." - Frantz Fanon, p. 4 (quoted from the book Wretched of the Earth)

"It seems the young folks who established and staffed the organization came from predominatnly Southern backgrounds and therefore had to have suffered a kind of dual alienation.  First, the global, overarching feeling of apartness stemming from being Black in a predominantly white and hostile environment.  Second, the distinction of being perceived as "country," or "southern," a connotation that has come to mean stupid, uncultured, and hickish in much of the northern mind." p. 6

Savage Inequalities (Children in America's Schools); Jonathan Kozol - Introduction: Looking Backward: 1964 - 1991

"None of the national reports I saw made even passing references to inequality or segregation.  Low reading scores, high dropout rates, poor motivation - symptomatic matters - seemed to dominate discussion.  In three cities - Baltimore, Milwaukee and Detroit - separate schools or separate classes for black males had been proposed.  Other cities - Washington, D.C., New York and Philadelphia among them - were considering the same approach.  Black parents or black school officials sometimes seem to favor this idea.  Booker T. Washington was cited with increasing frequency, Du Bois never, and Martin Luther King only with cautious selectivity.  He was treated as an icon, but his vision of a nation in which black and white kids went to school together seemed to be effaced almost entirely.  Dutiful references to "The Dream" were often seen in school brochures and on wall posters during February, when "Black History" was celebrated in the public schools, but the content of the dream was treated as a closed box that could not be opened without ruining the celebration." (p. 3)

"To the extent that school reforms such as "restructuring" are advocated for the inner cities, few of these reforms have reached the schools that I have seen.  In each of the larger cities there is usually one school or one subdistrict which is highly publicized as an example of "restructured" education; but the changes rarely reach beyond this one example.  Even in those schools where some "restructuring" has taken place, the fact of racial segregation has been, and continues to be, largely uncontested." (p. 4)

"Liberal critics of the Reagan era sometimes note that social policy in the United States, to the extent that it concerns black children and poor children, has been turned back several decades.  But this assertion, which is accurate as a description of some setbacks in the areas of housing, healthy and welfare, is not adequate to speak about the present-day reality in public education.  In public schooling, social policy has been turned back almost one hundred years." (p. 4)

Clock Without Hands; Carson McCullers (Chapters 1 and 2)

"Malone did not understand.  Shock bewildered him and the room seemed suddenly cold.  He understood only that something strange and terrible was happening to him in the cold and swaying room.  He was mesmerized by the paper knife that the doctor turned in his stubby, scrubbed fingers.  A long dormant memory stirred so that he was aware of something shameful that had been forgotten, although the memory itself was still unclear.  So he suffered a parallel distress - the fear and tension of the doctor's words and the mysterious and unremembered shame." p. 3


"As he sat holding the pestle there was in him enough composure to wonder at those alien emotions that had veered so violently in his once mild heart.  He was split between love and hatred - but what he loved and what he hated was unclear.  For the first time he knew that death was near him.  But the terror that choked him was not caused by the knowledge of his own death.  The terror concerned some mysterious drama that was going on - although what the drama was about Malone did not know.  The terror questioned what would happen in those months - how long? - that glared upon his numbered days.  He was a man watching a clock without hands." p. 25

"But later a strange dissonance appeared, a jolt in the usual harmony, a sense of cross purposes and communication deflected and estranged." p. 27

"Jester asked, 'How?'
'Why, boy, I'm referring to segregation itself.'
'Why are you always harping on segregation?'
'Why, Jester, you're joking.'
Jester was suddenly serious. 'No, I'm not.'

Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl; Linda Brent (Chapters 1-5)

"The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel." p. 448 (The Classic Slave Narratives)

"What cared my owners for that? He was merely a piece of property.  Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings.  This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters." p. 451

"If dinner was not served at the exact time on that particular Sunday, she would station herself in the kitchen, and wait till it was dished, and then spit in all the kettles and pans that had been used for cooking. She did this to prevent the cook and her children from eking out the meagre fare with the remains of the gravy and other scrapings. The slaves could get nothing eat except what she chose to give them." p. 453

"O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year's day with that of the poor bond-woman!  With you it is a pleasant season, and the light of the day is blessed.  Friendly wishes meet you every where and gifts are showered upon you.  Even hearts that have been estranged from you soften at this season, and lips that have been silent echo back, "I wish you a happy New Year."  Children bring their little offerings, and raise their rosy lips for a caress.  They are your own, and no hand but that of death can take them from you.  But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows.  She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.  She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood' but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies." p. 457

"It was on a lovely spring morning, and when I marked the sunlight dancing here and there, its beauty seemed to mock my sadness.  For my master, whose restless, craving, vicious nature roved about day and night, seeking whom to devous, had just left me, with stinging, scorching words that scathed ear and brain like fire. O, how I despired him! I thought how glad I should be, if some day when he walked the earth, it would open and swallow him up, and disencumber the world of a plague." p. 459

"He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of.  I turned from him with disgust and hatred.  But he was my master.  I was compelled to live under the same roof with him - where I say a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature.  He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things.  My soul revolted against the mean tyranny.  But where could I turn for protection?  No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or fair as her mistress.  In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men.  The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage.  The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slaver, are more than I can describe.  They are greater than you would willingly believe." pp. 470 - 471

"If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse.  That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave." p. 471

"How had those years dealt with her slave sister, the little playmate of her childhood?  She, also, was very beautiful; but the flowers and sunshine of love were not for her.  She drank the cup of sin, and shame, and misery, whereof her persecuted race are compelled to drink." p. 473

"Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes.  I am telling you the plain truth. Yet when victims make their escape from this wild beast of Slavery, northerners consent to act the part of bloodhounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den, "full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness."  Nay, more, they are not only willing, but proud, to give their daughters in marriage to slaveholders.  The poor girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime, and of the flowering vines that all the year round shade a happy home.  To what disappointments are they destined!  The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows.  Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household.  Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness." p. 479