. . . what a burning shame it is that many of the pieces on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, contained in different school books, have been lost sight of, or been subject to the pruning knife of the slaveholding expurgatorial system!

Maybe I'll learn a trade. I've considered taxidermy. I always thought it was a shame you couldn't do that on people.

Blacks in America want to forget about slavery -- the stigma, the shame. That's the wrong move. 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, which is the blues. And we forget it all.

I am proud to be an American Citizen.

We love our native country, much as it has wronged us; and in the peaceable exercise of our inalienable rights, we will cling to it . . . Will you starve our patriotism?

To make me believe that those men who have regulated education in our country have humanity in their hearts is to make me believe a lie.