Quotes About History

The brutal history of colonialism is one in which white people literally stole land and people for their own gain and material wealth.

Slavery exists. It is black in the South, and white in the North.

What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief.

'The Devil in the White City' - the 'White City' was the nickname for the World's Fair of 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

The story of the British empire helps to explain the roots of most British people: white, black, and Asian.

My mother is white. My biological father is black. When my mother was 17, she got pregnant. They lived in Waterloo, Iowa, which at the time in 1971 was a very segregated society.

Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun.

In 'Hamilton,' we're telling the stories of old, dead white men, but we're using actors of color, and that makes the story more immediate and more accessible to a contemporary audience.

Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with a list of black men that were qualified to be the president of the United States. So the Obama victory is progress for white people.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.

You can be poor, middle class, or rich - it doesn't matter. The black card will still confer upon you an entire history of oppression, even if you've never been oppressed. Flash the black card, and most white people will cower.

One of the problems with putting Huck Finn into a movie or on the stage is, you always make the white people stupid and racist. The point is, they don't know they're racist.

Nowadays, people always say, how come he's doing such young shows? But they never mention The Mod Squad. I was very proud of that show. It's the first time an African-American guy kissed a white girl.

I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.

There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder. They had continually, in the course of the history of slavery, recognized such men.

Everybody needs to show respect to each others' ways and the cultural life that you get on this planet. Don't get caught up on 'I'm brown, black, white, red, blue, whatever.' You gotta ask, what were you called before 1492? All these names we're using now are just an illusion made to keep us fighting each other.

I'm the black dude that loves old black culture. I also love old white culture. I just love history, but I'm the guy that wants to bring things back and push them forward.

My main electric guitar belonged to Clarence White, the great guitarist for the Byrds.

Nobody black had learned anything from the 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the 'I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.

In the academic world, biographies of these great figures of the past fell out of favor in the 1960s, when there was a turn toward social history, which meant the history of the voiceless and faceless. But the public at large never embraced the idea that these dead white guys should be abandoned.

When I'm in England, I know I'm a visitor, but being a white man in England with ancestry that's German and Italian, I have a history with the Romans and the Saxons. I feel some connection and ancestry here, as weird as that sounds.

It is not, nor will it ever be, white people's responsibility to teach black children our unique American history.