Category Archives: Reference

These are materials for teachers and parents, and you’ll find, in this category, teachers copies and answer keys for worksheets, quotes related to domain-specific knowledge in English Language Arts and social studies, and quotes on issues of professional concern. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Toni Cade Bambara

“(Born Miltona Mirkin Cade, 1939-1995): American short-story writer, novelist, and editor. Known as a writer and social activist, Bambara focused on issues of racial awareness and feminism. Her first, most widely read collection of stories, Gorilla, My Love (1972), depicts a young, sensitive black girl and her family and community as she grows up in a world of racial, sexual, and economic inequality. Her second collection, The Sea Birds Are Still Alive (1977), portrays the intense conflicts among people, especially women, involved in intimate relationships. Interested in black liberation and women’s movements during the 1970s, Bambara edited and contributed to The Black Women: An Anthology (1970), one of the early collections of feminist writing. Her novel, The Salt Eaters (1980), set in Claybourne, Georgia, deals with the recovery of the revolutionary community organizer Velma Henry from an attempted suicide.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Muhammad Ali on His Career in Sports

“It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand, I beat people up.”

Muhammad Ali

Quoted in N.Y. Times, 6 April 1977

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Richard Wright

 “1908-1960 American novelist. Born on a farm near Natchez, Mississippi, Wright, largely self-educated, began to write after he moved to Chicago in 1934. Often associated with Nelson Algren, James Farrell, and the Chicago realists, he wrote powerfully dramatic books exploring the ways in which blacks have been shaped and misshaped by white society. His first published work, Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), a collection of four novellas, was followed by Native Son (1940), which became a minor classic and was made into a film in 1951 and again in 1986. Wright was a member of the Communist Party from 1932 to 1944, lived in Mexico for much of the 1940s, and moved to Paris in 1946, where he remained until his death. His autobiography, Black Boy appeared in 1945. Other works include The Outsider (1953), a philosophical novel; White Man, Listen! (1957); The Long Dream (1958), a novel; and Eight Men (1961), a collection of stories published posthumously, which contains some of his finest writing.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Maya Angelou as Dramaturge

“Blacks should be used to play whites. For centuries, we had probed their faces, the angles of their bodies, the sounds of their voices, and even their odors. Often our survival had depended on the accurate reading of a white man’s chuckle, or the disdainful wave of a white woman’s hand.”

Maya Angelou

The Heart of a Woman, ch. 12 (1981)

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

James Baldwin to Angela Davis

“If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”

James Baldwin

“Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis” (1971)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Richard Wright on Inequality

“Goddamit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like living in hell.”

Richard Wright

Native Son, bk. 1 (1940)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Jack Johnson

(originally John Arthur) (1878-1946) U.S. heavyweight boxing champion, the first black to hold the title. Born in Galveston, Texas, his career was marked from the beginning by racial discrimination. He won the national heavyweight crown in 1908 by knocking out Tommy Burns and kept it until 1915, when he was knocked out in Havana by Jess Willard in 26 rounds. After he became champion, a cry for a ‘Great White Hope’ to defeat him produced numerous opponents. He was excoriated by the press for twice marrying white women. In 1912 he was convicted of violating the Mann Act for transporting his fiancée across state lines. He fled to Canada and then to Europe, continuing to fight as a fugitive before surrendering in 1920 to serve a one-year sentence. He died in a car crash. He won 80 of his 114 bouts.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Dr. King on America’s Defaulted Debt

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir…America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Speech at Civil Rights March, Washington, D.C., 28 August 1963

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Imamu Amiri Baraka

Formerly Leroi Jones, 1934-2014). American poet and playwright. Dutchman, a taut one-act play, part realistic, part ritualistic, crystalizing the conflicts between white and black cultures, established Baraka as an important force in stimulating black playwriting and production. Slave Ship (1967), relies on music and action as much as language to unfold its haunting story. Baraka’s theater is aggressive and provocative, yet lyrical in its theatrical effect. His prolific output of essays and poetry includes Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (1961) The Dead Lecturer (1964), Black Magic (1969) and Hard Facts (1976); his work is collected in Selected Plays and Prose and Selected Poetry (both 1979). Two other works appeared in 1979: a collection of poetry AM/TRAK and Spring Song. Reggae or Not, prose writings, appeared in 1981. Baraka’s later works have become increasingly polemical and separatist, causing many white liberals to desert him. He also published The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues (1987), Shy’s Wise: The Griot’s Tale (1994), and Jesse Jackson and Black People (1994).”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

W.E.B. DuBois as Psychologist

“The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in universal contempt and pity.”

W.E.B. DuBois

“Strivings of the Negro People” (1897)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.