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Malcolm X found the language that communicated across the board, from college professor to floor sweeper, all at the same time, without demeaning the intellect of either.

John Henrik Clarke

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John Henrik Clarke
Age: 83 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 1
Died: 1998
Died: July 16
Historian
Writer
Union Springs
Alabama
John Clarke
Without
Boards
Sweeper
Time
Floor
Sweepers
Intellect
Demeaning
Across
Communicated
College
Malcolm
Either
Professor
Language
Board
Found
Professors

More quotes by John Henrik Clarke

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Violence among all people is based on dissatisfaction, frustration and crushed ambition and people who don't know who to strike at and who to blame, and not willing to blame themselves.
John Henrik Clarke
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My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together.
John Henrik Clarke
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You shouldn't bear humiliations.
John Henrik Clarke
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I have no faith in much organized religion because I think it's by a bunch of hypocrites and practiced by a bunch of hypocrites. They don't mean what they say because all of them are in the slave trade one way or the other.
John Henrik Clarke
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I am a nationalist, and a Pan-Africanist, first and foremost. I was well grounded in history before ever taking a history course. I did not spend much formal time in school - I had to work.
John Henrik Clarke
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I don't attend any particular church now. I don't believe in denominations, nor do I believe in organized religion.
John Henrik Clarke
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Everything that touches YOUR life, must be an instrument of YOUR liberation or tossed into the trash cans of HISTORY
John Henrik Clarke
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My daddy wanted me to be a farmer feel the smoothness of Alabama clay and become one of the first blacks in my town to own land. But, I was worried about my history being caked with that southern clay, and I subscribed to a different kind of teaching and learning in my bones and in my spirit.
John Henrik Clarke
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All life is a test one way or the other.
John Henrik Clarke
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In the African matrilineal society, the lineage of the bloodline comes down through the female side. The Arabs who invaded East Africa and other parts of Africa reversed it to the patrilineal where everything comes down through the male side and the woman has no basic rights except that which the male is willing to grant her.
John Henrik Clarke
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To control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you.
John Henrik Clarke
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Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.
John Henrik Clarke
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It is unfortunate that so much of the history of Africa has been written by conquerors, foreigners, missionaries and adventurers. The Egyptians left the best record of their history written by local writers.
John Henrik Clarke
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We never see ourselves as heroes and sometimes when we do it is a hero that has made a fortune as a clown or a boxer. And there is no lasting value in either one of those.
John Henrik Clarke
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I believe in doing good for good's sake.
John Henrik Clarke
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Your group has a right and responsibility to preside over your behavior and you have a responsibility to make that behavior in a manner that does not endanger the group.
John Henrik Clarke
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I think that Jesus-dependency has taken over our minds, and too many of our institutions.
John Henrik Clarke
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I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
John Henrik Clarke
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Europeans not only colonized most of the world, they colonized information about the world.
John Henrik Clarke
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History is like a clock, it tells you your time of day.
John Henrik Clarke