Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Henrik Clarke
Age: 83 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 1
Died: 1998
Died: July 16
Historian
Writer
Union Springs
Alabama
John Clarke
Going
Support
Unite
People
Community
Slaves
Making
Communities
Black
Families
Business
Mercy
Wells
Slave
Might
Begin
Well
Nobody
Compunction

More quotes by John Henrik Clarke

Image
I believe in doing good for good's sake.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
There has been a struggle to reclaim the African self. That struggle has been on the part of a minority of dedicated African-Americans who never gave up our African identity at no time during our stay here.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
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
Image
If we don't unite, chances are we will go back into slavery.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
I don't attend any particular church now. I don't believe in denominations, nor do I believe in organized religion.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
The white woman has never had the co-equal status that the African woman has had.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
After the Moslem Africans lost control over Spain, they began to prey on the Africans further to the south. They destroyed the great independent states in West Africa, and subsequently set Africa up for the Western slave trade and the Arabs were in the slave trade before Islam and they are still in the slave trade.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
This kind of collective society - giving to each according to his need - existed in Africa not only before Karl Marx, but also before Europe.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
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
Image
When I was able to go to school in my early years, my third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, convinced me that one day I would be a writer. I heard her, but I knew that I had to leave Georgia, and unlike my friend Ray Charles, I did not go around with 'Georgia on My Mind.'
John Henrik Clarke
Image
In Africa, the woman was co-equal. In Europe, the woman was a vassal. To some extent, she still is.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
You shouldn't bear humiliations.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
People rise and fall on the basis of the makings of institutions.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'
John Henrik Clarke
Image
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
Image
In order to have a charismatic leader, you have to have a charismatic program. Because if you have a charismatic program, then if you can read you can lead. When the leader gets killed while you're reading from page 13 of your charismatic program, you can bury the man with honors, then continue the plan by reading from page 14. Let's keep on.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
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
Image
What has been imposed on religion is not religion itself but the custom of those who have been converted to it. I think that the most atrocious of all of this is Islam. They were in the slave trade before Islam. The Arabs were natural slave traders. They were the people who were called on to conquer us, unfortunately.
John Henrik Clarke
Image
The Arabs are deep in the slave trade right now.
John Henrik Clarke