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I say if black people don't unite and begin to support themselves, their communities and their families, they might as well begin to go out of business as a people. Nobody's going to have any mercy. And nobody's going to have any compunction about making slaves out of them.

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
Business
Mercy
Wells
Slave
Might
Begin
Well
Nobody
Compunction
Going
Support
Unite
People
Community
Slaves
Making
Communities
Black
Families

More quotes by John Henrik Clarke

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What we might have been dealing with here - with the building of the Pyramids - is an age that got lost. Man had to learn again what they previously had known.
John Henrik Clarke
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I make a special point of working on Thanksgiving Day. I have friends I go out with but I even make it plain to them. The standard reason for Thanksgiving doesn't mean nothing to me.
John Henrik Clarke
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I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.
John Henrik Clarke
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All life is a test one way or the other.
John Henrik Clarke
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The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word 'Africa.' According to most records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people now called Africans not only influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the early world before there was a place called Europe.
John Henrik Clarke
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You walk out in the street, we don't know if we're going to get across. It's a test.
John Henrik Clarke
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I believe in doing good for good's sake.
John Henrik Clarke
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If we don't unite, chances are we will go back into slavery.
John Henrik Clarke
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The one thing you never integrate at the ruin of your own pleasure is your institutions.
John Henrik Clarke
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You look at a clock and it tells you it's eight o'clock, you know the number of hours that has been before eight you know the number of hours you've got after eight. You can now measure your time to see if you can get done a number of things you've got to get done. History serves the same purpose.
John Henrik Clarke
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The white woman has never had the co-equal status that the African woman has had.
John Henrik Clarke
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The role of religions in the domination and destruction of African civilizations was ruthless... Islam was as guilty as all the rest.
John Henrik Clarke
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No more religion anymore. No more who's a Moslem and who's a Protestant.
John Henrik Clarke
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We 've lost something else: the relationship between men and women.
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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Anytime you turn on your own concept of God, you are no longer a free man. No one needs to put chains on your body, because the chains are on your mind.
John Henrik Clarke
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In Africa, the woman was co-equal. In Europe, the woman was a vassal. To some extent, she still is.
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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History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are but, more importantly, what they must be.
John Henrik Clarke
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Our concept of beauty is taken from Hollywood, which is anti-black. We don't see ourselves as beautiful in most cases. Although we are naturally one of the most beautiful peoples out there, we don't see it. We don't get the point. Hollywood sets the standards.
John Henrik Clarke