Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'
It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery.
The question of what actually caused the Civil War is secondary to the result of the Civil War, which is that after the war was over, slavery was ended, and the North and the South reconciled. And I think we need to respect that.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery other than in prisons - but it was a lie that you regained your freedom once you left the prison gates.
The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.
To me, as I see it, reparations would be something that is fairly specific to the descendants of slaves, and it would also be an official apology from the United States government for slavery.
We've got to stand up at some point and say, 'We are not gonna pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress.' That war's been fought. That was over a century ago. That debt was paid for in blood, and it was paid for in the blood of a lot of Yankees, especially. And there's no reparations for the blood that paid for the sin of slavery.
The originating sin of America is slavery, for which reparations should be paid and will never be paid; as a result, mini-reparations are paid daily, and the NBA remains, for me, reparations theater.
I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.
Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it no legal sanction.
Women were once considered chattel, and slavery was regarded as sanctioned in the Bible. However, western society grew to recognize that neither was just.
Do you think it's a good idea to be sarcastic about slavery?
I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom.
The poor North has much to do with slavery. It staggers under its load and smarts under its lash.
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong - if those laws of the Southern States, by virtue of which slavery exists there, and is what it is, are not wrong - nothing is wrong.
I speak on due consideration because Britain, France, and Mexico, have abolished slavery, and all other European states are preparing to abolish it as speedily as they can.
Blacks in America want to forget about slavery - the stigma, the shame. If you can't be who you are, who can you be? How can you know what to do? We have our history. We have our book, and that is the blues.
Photography, sculpture, and painting were wielded as cultural weapons over the course of generations to substantiate the idea that black people were inherently subordinate beings; they were used to make slavery acceptable and to make black subjugation more palatable.
Slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, subordination, and human rights abuse transform and adapt with the times.
