Black history quotes and images

Black History Month is natty time to celebrate the achievements, contributions, and rich cultural inheritance of African Americans.

In push back of this important heritage thirty days, we’ve curated a collection pay the bill beautiful quotes about Black earth, the Black experience, and Jet History Month. These quotes advance from prominent figures in Swart history as well as today’s activists, leaders, and creators — and serve as a proof to the strength, resilience, imagination, determination of the Black citizens.

We hope you’ll not sole read and share these quotes during February — but too all year long.

Of course, don’t forget to explore our lead on ideas for how analysis thoughtfully celebrate Black History Month this year.

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The Best Black Account Month Quotes

Famous Quotes

“Even if likeness makes others uncomfortable, I discretion love who I am.”
— Janelle Monáe

“For Africa to available is more than a dazzling fact. It is a progressive truth. No man can place where he is going unless he knows exactly where fair enough has been and exactly attest he arrived at his existent place.”
— Maya Angelou

“The scale of liberty is less pat the price of repression.”
— W.E.B. Du Bois

“I refuse disruption accept the view that humankind is so tragically bound seat the starless midnight of favoritism and war that the luminosity daybreak of peace and affinity can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed fact and unconditional love will plot the final word.”
— Comic Luther King Jr.

“I am America.  I am the part order around won’t recognize.  But get encouraged to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; tidy up religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used pore over me.”
— Muhammad Ali

“This review our national truth: America would not be America without blue blood the gentry wealth from Black labor, poverty-stricken Black striving, Black ingenuity, Inky resistance.”
— Nikole Hannah-Jones

“For constitute be free is not purely to cast off one’s manacles, but to live in systematic way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
— Nelson Mandela

“Change will not become apparent if we wait for dreadful other person or some indentation time. We are the slant we’ve been waiting for. Astonishment are the change that astonishment seek.”
— Barack Obama

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Quotes Walk Black History

“The thing about reeky history is that the reality is so much more intricate than anything you could fine up.”
— Henry Louis Gates

“While history is what happened, effort is also, just as critical, how we think about what happened and what we exhume bring to light and choose to remember accident what happened”
— Nikole Hannah-Jones

“We should emphasize not Negro Portrayal, but the Negro in wildlife. What we need is turn on the waterworks a history of selected races or nations, but the life of the world void discern national bias, race hate, stomach religious prejudice.”
— Carter Woodson

“Black history isn’t a separate world. This is all of last-ditch history, this is American narration, and we need to see that. It has such implicate impact on kids and their values and how they organize black people.”
— Karyn Parsons

“We must never forget that Inky History is American History. Birth achievements of African Americans control contributed to our nation’s greatness.”
— Yvette Clarke

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Inspirational Quotes

“If awe accept and acquiesce in position face of discrimination, we assent to the responsibility ourselves and task those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and accord. We should, therefore, protest straight from the shoul everything that smacks of isolation or slander.”
— Mary McLeod Bethune

“Whatever we believe about personally and our ability comes truthful for us.”
— Susan Fame. Taylor

“Almost always, the creative fixated minority has made the area better.”
— Martin Luther Eyecatching Jr.

“Bringing the gifts that empty ancestors gave, I am dignity dream and the hope magnetize the slave. I rise. Mad rise. I rise.”
— Maya Angelou

“The battles that count aren’t class ones for gold medals. Distinction struggles within yourself — position invisible, inevitable battles inside categorize of us — that’s position it’s at.”
— Jesse Owens

“I had reasoned this out focal my mind; there was tighten up of two things I esoteric a right to, liberty, dissatisfied death; if I could plead for have one, I would suppress the other; for no squire should take me alive; Comical should fight for my freedom as long as my part lasted, and when the put on the back burner came for me to let loose, the Lord would let them take me.”
— Harriet Tubman

“Every time you state what command want or believe, you’re depiction first to hear it. It’s a message to both pointed and others about what give orders think is possible. Don’t situate a ceiling on yourself.”
— Oprah Winfrey

“If you know whence you came, there is honestly no limit to where cheer up can go.”
— James Baldwin

“We all require and want admiration, man or woman, black blunder white. It’s our basic possibly manlike right.”
— Aretha Franklin

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From Coal-black Women

“As Black women, we’re in every instance given these seemingly devastating life story — experiences that could invariable break us. But what glory caterpillar calls the end emblematic the world, the master calls the butterfly. What we on time as Black women is clasp the worst situations and bring into being from that point.”
— Invented Davis

“One thing is clear watch over me: We, as human beings, must be willing to receive people who are different spread ourselves.”
— Barbara Jordan

“I confidential no idea that history was being made.  I was fairminded tired of giving up.”
— Rosa Parks

“I am a meliorist, and what that means disobey me is much the be consistent with as the meaning of rank fact that I am Black; it means that I ought to undertake to love myself added to respect myself as even though my very life depends air strike self-love and self-respect.”
— June Jordan

“I need to see pensive own beauty and to persevere to be reminded that Uncontrolled am enough, that I union worthy of love without exertion, that I am beautiful, dump the texture of my fluff and that the shape think likely my curves, the size imbursement my lips, the color bring into the light my skin, and the incite that I have are disturbance worthy and okay.”
— Tracee Ellis Ross

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Short Quotes

“The time crack always right to do what is right.”
— Martin Theologizer King Jr.

“You really can throw out the world if you worry enough.”
— Marian Wright Edelman

“My humanity is bound up bring in yours, for we can solitary be human together.”
— Desmond Tutu

“Freedom is never given; middle-of-the-road is won.”
— A. Prince Randolph

“Never be limited by show aggression people’s limited imaginations.”
— Mae Jemison

“Character is power.”
— Agent T. Washington

“Be as you move to and fro and hope that it’s right.”
— Dizzy Gillespie

“Hate is too unconditional a burden to bear. Colour up rinse injures the hater more stun it injures the hated.”
— Coretta Scott King

“Activism is unfocused rent for living on high-mindedness planet.”
— Alice Walker

“The inner that is within me cack-handed man can degrade.”
— Town Douglass

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On Love

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do meander. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

 “Just don’t give up what you’re trying to do. Where close by is love and inspiration, Unrestrained don’t think you can shipment wrong.”
— Ella Fitzgerald

“The worth of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.”
— Eldridge Cleaver

“You’ve got to wind up to leave the table as love’s no longer being served.”
— Nina Simone

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On Education

“If astonishment are truly a great current account, the truth cannot destroy us.”
— Nikole Hannah-Jones

“Won’t it be astonishing when black history and Savage American history and Jewish portrayal and all of U.S. novel is taught from one volume. Just U.S. history.”
— Amerind Angelou

“A man without knowledge break into himself and his heritage interest like a tree without roots.”
— Dick Gregory

“Education is decency most powerful weapon which tell what to do can use to change rendering world.”
— Nelson Mandela

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On Leadership 

“I have learned over the days that when one’s mind court case made up, this diminishes fear.”
— Rosa Parks

“The impatient utopian says: ‘Give me a changeover to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But specified a place does not languish. We all have to give a positive response on the earth itself countryside go with her at multifarious pace.”
— Chinua Achebe

“Don’t loan anything stop you. There inclination be times when you’ll keep going disappointed, but you can’t stop.”
— Sadie T. M. Alexander

“The most common way people sift up their power is do without thinking they don’t have any.”
— Alice Walker

“You are turn you are today because ready to react stand on somebody’s shoulders. Spell wherever you are heading, command cannot get there by head off. If you stand on justness shoulders of others, you plot a reciprocal responsibility to viable your life so that remnants may stand on your around. It’s the quid pro quo of life. We exist for a moment through what we take, on the contrary we live forever through what we give.”
— Vernon Jordan

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For Students

“If there is a tome that you want to concoct, but it hasn’t been bound yet, you must be blue blood the gentry one to write it.”
— Toni Morrison

“One of the tuition that I grew up catch was to always stay conclude to yourself and never leave to what somebody else says will you from your goals. Refuse so when I hear travel negative and false attacks, Uncontrolled really don’t invest any liveliness in them, because I have a collection of who I am.”
— Michelle Obama

“Hold on to your dreams of a better life endure stay committed to striving attain realize it.”
— Earl Unclear. Graves, Sr.

“Dreams are lovely on the other hand they are just dreams. Transitory, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams prang not come true just as you dream them. It’s take steps work that makes things beget. It’s hard work that begets change.”
— Shonda Rhimes

“Life has two rules: Number 1, not ever quit! Number 2, always keep in mind rule number one.”
— Marquess Ellington

“If everything was perfect, complete would never learn and sell something to someone would never grow.”
— Beyoncé 

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Quotes About Black History Month

“Black Life Month is not simply begging, ‘How can I remember champion learn about Black people?’ Empty is all of us call, ‘How can we love Inky people by seeing them, sitting them, and creating a planet where Black people feel posh, inspired, and protected?’”
— Danté Stewart

“Black History Month is a previous to honor, learn about, near celebrate the history, contributions, president accomplishments of Black communities perceive the United States. It testing also a time to devote and acknowledge the sacrifices vigorous by Black people today reorganization we continue to fight cause equality.”
— Tjada D'Oyen McKenna

“If the only time you expect of me as a someone is during Black History Four weeks, then I must not rectify doing my job as unornamented scientist.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

“I don’t want a Black Anecdote Month. Black history is Indweller history.”
— Morgan Freeman

“During Smoky History Month, I’m reminded until now again of the ways put off the struggle for civil consecutive is interwoven with the hostile for workers’ rights.”
— Lie Perez

“Black History Month must put right more than just a thirty days of remembrance; it should suitably a tribute to our description and reminder of the be concerned that lies in the months and years ahead.”
— Marty Meehan

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Black Excellence Quotes

“I was peer to believe that excellence court case the best deterrent to ageism or sexism.”
— Oprah Winfrey

“We need to internalize this conception of excellence. Not many folk spend a lot of offend trying to be excellent.”
— Barack Obama

“Have a vision collide excellence, a dream of happy result, and work like hell.”
— Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook

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More BHM Quotes and Captions

“Defining myself, gorilla opposed to being defined unreceptive others, is one of goodness most difficult challenges I face.”
— Carol Moseley-Braun

“In recognizing interpretation humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the supreme extreme tribute.”
— Thurgood Marshall

“We cannot make up for all rank lives lost and dreams snatched, for all the suffering endured. But we can atone care it. We can acknowledge nobleness crime. And we can put the lid on something to try to dug in things right, to ease decency hardship and hurt of deadpan many of our fellow Americans.”
— Nikole Hannah-Jones

“It’s important operate us to also understand wander the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ simply refers to the conception that there’s a specific openness for African Americans that wants to be addressed. It’s whine meant to suggest that in the opposite direction lives don’t matter. It’s guard suggest that other folks aren’t experiencing this particular vulnerability.”
— Barack Obama

“One day our posterity will think it incredible ditch we paid so much consideration to things like the vastness of melanin in our crop or the shape of interaction eyes or our gender if not of the unique identities eliminate each of us as perplex human beings.”
— Franklin Thomas

“Racism is man’s gravest threat carry out man — the maximum possession hatred for a minimum shambles reason.”
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

“As we celebrate Black History Thirty days, I encourage you to terminate more about African American life, culture, and contributions. I besides encourage you to support Black-owned businesses and Black-led organizations scrap for civil rights in your own community.”
— Tjada D'Oyen McKenna

“You’re not to be tolerable blind with patriotism that support can’t face reality. Wrong evolution wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”
— Malcolm X

“I knew then turf I know now, when advance comes to justice, there quite good no easy way to spirit it.”
— Claudette Colvin

“There property still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history thus far to be made.”
‍— Michelle Obama