Black History Month quotes: 75 real quotes from Black leaders
Abolitionists, scientists, writers and athletes in their own words, each with a copy button. Every quote checked against its source.
KraftyLab TeamUpdated 14 min read
The Black History Month quotes people share most are often the ones least likely to be real: lines credited to Harriet Tubman, Maya Angelou and Nelson Mandela that they never said or wrote. These 75 famous African American quotes for Black History Month, plus a few from Black leaders in Africa, were checked one by one against the speaker's own book, speech, letter or interview, or the sourced section of their Wikiquote page. Where the popular wording differs, we used theirs. They're sorted by theme, with the basics of the month, ideas for using them at work, six meeting openers and the famous lines we left out.
Short Black History Month quotes
Each is twelve words or fewer: short enough for a February email signature, a slide title or the channel topic.
1
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and writer
2
I, too, sing America.
Langston Hughes, poet
3
Never be afraid to sit a while and think.
Lorraine Hansberry, playwright
4
If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
Toni Morrison, novelist
5
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Fannie Lou Hamer, voting rights organizer
6
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader
7
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and folklorist
8
We all have ability. The difference is how we use it.
Stevie Wonder, musician
9
I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential.
Shirley Chisholm, congresswoman
Famous Black history quotes on freedom, justice and history
The speeches, letters and books behind the month, from 1855 to 2002.
On freedom and justice
From abolitionists, organizers and the people who sat, marched and testified.
10
I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.
Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and writer
11
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and writer
12
The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.
Ida B. Wells, journalist
13
I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.
Rosa Parks, civil rights activist
14
I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home.
Rosa Parks, civil rights activist
15
Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit, a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.
Ella Baker, civil rights organizer
16
My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.
Robert Smalls, ship pilot and congressman
17
I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.
Nelson Mandela, South African president
18
Racism is a grown-up disease, and we must stop using our children to spread it.
Ruby Bridges, school integration pioneer
19
The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.
Wole Soyinka, playwright and poet
20
Peace must be paced by human progress. Peace is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting.
Ralph Bunche, diplomat
21
You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.
Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court justice
Quotes about Black history, heritage and learning
The month exists because a historian thought the record was incomplete. These African American history quotes are about knowing where you come from.
22
History does not furnish a case of the elevation of a people by ignoring the thought and aspiration of the people thus served.
Carter G. Woodson, historian
23
If you don't know what happened behind you, you've no idea of what is happening around you.
James Baldwin, writer
24
Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
Ralph Ellison, novelist
25
Believe in life! Always human beings will progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.
W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist and historian
26
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist and historian
27
I leave you a thirst for education. Knowledge is the prime need of the hour.
Mary McLeod Bethune, educator
28
What people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise.
Barbara Jordan, congresswoman
29
The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.
Arturo Schomburg, historian and collector
30
There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens.
Coretta Scott King, civil rights leader
Black excellence quotes from scientists, artists and athletes
Quotes from people at the top of their fields, about the work itself.
From scientists, engineers and explorers
From the blood bank to the North Pole to the Apollo trajectories, in their own words.
31
We have to do something like this to get them interested in science. Sometimes they are not aware of the number of black scientists, and don't even know of the career opportunities until it is too late.
Mary Jackson, NASA engineer
32
There is no scientific basis for the separation of the bloods of different races except on the basis of the individual blood types or groups.
Charles Drew, surgeon and blood researcher
33
I think I'm the first person to sit on the top of the world.
Matthew Henson, Arctic explorer
34
I loved going to work every single day.
Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician
35
We need to revitalize the arts and sciences today. We need to take responsibility for the future.
Mae Jemison, astronaut and physician
36
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist
From writers and artists
Poets, novelists, painters, dancers and actors on their work and on being honest about it.
37
Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin, writer
38
Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
Langston Hughes, poet
39
Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
Gwendolyn Brooks, poet
40
Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.
Richard Wright, novelist
41
When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.
Jacob Lawrence, painter
42
I cannot see that I did anything extraordinary to merit this honor. Everything was just as it had to be.
Josephine Baker, entertainer and Resistance agent
43
Just stick with it. Just stick with it. There's always a reason why you keep going in the direction you chose to go in.
Cicely Tyson, actor
44
I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid.
Maya Angelou, poet and memoirist
45
Making dances is an act of progress; it is an act of growth, an act of music, an act of teaching, an act of celebration, an act of joy.
Alvin Ailey, choreographer
46
It is a little dark still, but there are warnings of the day and somewhere out of the darkness a bird is singing to the Dawn.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, poet
From athletes
Champions on character, respect and doing the job well. Two of them are funny on purpose.
47
I decided I wasn't going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.
Jesse Owens, Olympic sprinter
48
It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close.
Jesse Owens, Olympic sprinter
49
I'm not trying to make anyone forget the Babe; but only to remember Hank Aaron.
Hank Aaron, baseball player
50
I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.
Jackie Robinson, baseball player
51
There are professionals and there are mercenaries in sports. The difference between them is that the professional is involved.
Bill Russell, basketball player
52
I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people have to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball player
53
If Ali says a mosquito can pull a plow, don't ask how. Hitch him up.
Muhammad Ali, boxer
54
He can run, but he can't hide.
Joe Louis, boxer
Inspirational quotes for Black History Month
On work, on love and on hope: the sections people reach for in a card, a closing slide or the last post of the month.
On work and leadership
A bank founder, a sociologist and a president on doing good work and saying what's true.
55
Let us have a bank that will take the nickels and turn them into dollars.
Maggie L. Walker, bank founder
56
The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.
W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist and historian
57
We must set out to do a good job irrespective of race. We must seek to do our life's work so well that nobody could do it better.
Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader
58
A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
Nelson Mandela, South African president
59
Nourish what makes you feel confident, connected, contented. Opportunity will rise to meet you.
Oprah Winfrey, media executive
60
I have very little regard for consensus if it blinds you to the truth.
Harry Belafonte, singer and activist
Black history quotes about love
Love as a choice, a discipline and a refusal to hate, from people who had every reason to.
61
I leave you love. Love builds. It is positive and helpful. It is more beneficial than hate.
Mary McLeod Bethune, educator
62
The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.
bell hooks, author and professor
63
Love, I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.
Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and folklorist
64
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
James Baldwin, writer
65
It is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.
Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader
66
There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.
Lorraine Hansberry, playwright
67
I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
Booker T. Washington, educator
68
When you hate, the only person that is suffering is you because most of the people you hate don't know it and the rest don't care.
Medgar Evers, civil rights activist
On hope
For the last week of February, or any week that needs it.
69
I looked at my hands, to see if I was de same person now I was free.
Harriet Tubman, abolitionist
70
Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.
Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and folklorist
71
I leave you hope. The Negro's growth will be great in the years to come.
Mary McLeod Bethune, educator
72
In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground.
Wangari Maathai, environmentalist
73
Each and every one of you has the power, the will and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live in.
Harry Belafonte, singer and activist
74
South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world.
Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid archbishop
75
It's so nice to get flowers while you can still smell the fragrance.
Lena Horne, singer and actor
Black History Month basics
Worth knowing before you post the first quote, and each one checked.
Black History Month is observed in February in the United States and in Canada.
It grew out of Negro History Week, which the historian Carter G. Woodson and his Association for the Study of Negro Life and History launched in the second week of February 1926. February 2026 marked 100 years.
Woodson chose February because Black communities already celebrated two birthdays in it: Abraham Lincoln's and Frederick Douglass's.
The week became a month in the US in 1976. Presidential proclamations call it National African American History Month.
Canada's House of Commons recognized February as Black History Month in December 1995, on a motion by Jean Augustine, the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons.
Each year the association Woodson founded, now ASALH, chooses a national theme and announces it on its site.
Find the current theme at asalh.org before you put it on a slide.
How to use Black History Month quotes at work
Add one sentence about the person behind the quote and it teaches something. Four places to use them, with wording you can borrow.
A quote a day in February. Post one each workday with one sentence about who the speaker was. The sentence matters more than the quote: it's the part people learn from. Mix fields so the month isn't the same five names.“Today's quote is from Maggie L. Walker, who founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond in 1903, the first bank chartered by an African American woman in the US: ‘Let us have a bank that will take the nickels and turn them into dollars.’”
On the all-hands slide. One quote, the speaker's name and role, and thirty seconds from whoever is presenting on why they picked it. Don't use it as decoration under an unrelated agenda.“I picked Katherine Johnson's line, ‘I loved going to work every single day,’ because she said it about 33 years of calculations at NASA Langley. It's a high bar for the rest of us.”
In the February newsletter. Three quotes from three different fields, a link to something to read or watch, and the date of the month's main event. Short beats complete.“This month's three voices: a NASA engineer, a bank founder and a poet. Read their words below, then join the Black History trivia hour on the 20th, which our Black employee network is co-hosting.”
Next to something real. A quote on its own can look like a token gesture. Pair it with something people do: a talk, a book club, a trivia hour, a donation match, time for your Black employee network to lead.“All month we're sharing one quote each morning. The full calendar of talks and events is on the intranet, and the matching gift program doubles donations to the organizations our network chose.”
Each pairs a quote from this page with a question we wrote. Read the quote, say who said it, ask the question, one answer each. Or open with a round from our Black History Month trivia questions.
Carter G. Woodson: “History does not furnish a case of the elevation of a people by ignoring the thought and aspiration of the people thus served.”
Whose story from our own field's history should more people know?
Ralph Ellison: “Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors.”
Who outside your family shaped the way you work?
Katherine Johnson: “I loved going to work every single day.”
What part of your job makes a day feel like that?
Jackie Robinson: “All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”
What does respect look like on this team, in practice?
Maggie L. Walker: “Let us have a bank that will take the nickels and turn them into dollars.”
What small habit, repeated, made a big difference for you?
Lorraine Hansberry: “Never be afraid to sit a while and think.”
What would you like more time to think about this month?
Famous quotes we left out
These show up on most lists of Black History Month quotes. We left them off because the words aren't the speaker's.
“If you are tired, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going.” (usually credited to Harriet Tubman)
Wikiquote lists it as disputed, quoting her biographer Kate Clifford Larson: Tubman never said it, and it comes from one of the many fictionalized biographies written for children.
“I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.” (usually credited to Harriet Tubman)
Wikiquote lists it as disputed: it first appears in a 1993 book with no citation, and no earlier source is known. Our Tubman quote comes from her 1886 biography by Sarah Bradford.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” (usually credited to Nelson Mandela)
It's from Marianne Williamson's book A Return to Love (1992), and Wikiquote notes it is very often credited to Mandela by mistake.
“A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” (usually credited to Maya Angelou)
Wikiquote lists it as misattributed. It's a version of a line by the poet Joan Walsh Anglund, even though it appeared on a US postage stamp honoring Angelou.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” (usually credited to Maya Angelou)
Wikiquote lists it as misattributed: the line is Zora Neale Hurston's, from Dust Tracks on a Road (1942).
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men.” (usually credited to Muhammad Ali)
Wikiquote lists it as misattributed: copywriter Aimee Lehto wrote it for an Adidas ad campaign that showed Ali, as Quote Investigator documented.
Looking for quotes on inclusion and belonging for the rest of the year? Our diversity and inclusion quotes are checked the same way.
Run it with a host
A quote a day keeps the month visible. For one hour where everyone takes part, Black History Trivia & Games is a 60-minute hosted trivia event on Black history, trailblazers and the moments that shaped the world, with teams that rotate after each round. A live host runs it on your video call, on Zoom by default (Teams, Google Meet or Webex on request), and teams split across time zones can book two sessions. Book about 2 weeks ahead. It sits in our Black Heritage & Celebration collection, and our heritage month events page covers the rest of the year.
A hosted hour for February, with today's price. Get a free quote with your date and headcount.
What are some famous Black quotes for Black History Month?
Frederick Douglass's “If there is no struggle, there is no progress” (1857), Langston Hughes's “I, too, sing America” (1925) and Shirley Chisholm's “I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential” (1970) are three of the best known, and all three are on this page with their sources.
When is Black History Month?
February, in both the United States and Canada. It began as Negro History Week in February 1926, started by the historian Carter G. Woodson, and became a month in the US in 1976. Canada's House of Commons recognized it in December 1995.
Are African American History Month quotes the same as Black History Month quotes?
Yes. US presidential proclamations call February National African American History Month, and it's the same observance. This page also includes Black leaders from outside the US, such as Nelson Mandela, Wangari Maathai and Wole Soyinka.
What is this year's Black History Month theme?
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the group Carter G. Woodson founded, picks a national theme every year and announces it on asalh.org. Check there before you print it on anything, since it changes every February.
Did Harriet Tubman say “If you are tired, keep going”?
No. Her biographer Kate Clifford Larson has said it comes from a fictionalized children's biography, and Wikiquote lists it as disputed. Tubman's own reported words, from Sarah Bradford's 1886 biography, include “I looked at my hands, to see if I was de same person now I was free.”
How do you use Black History Month quotes at work without it feeling like a token gesture?
Add one sentence about who the speaker was, mix fields and eras, and pair the quotes with something people actually do: a talk, a trivia hour, a book club or time for your Black employee network to lead. Our Black History Month ideas for work have more.
Are there good Black History Month quotes about love?
Yes. Mary McLeod Bethune's “I leave you love. Love builds.” is from the last will she published in 1955, and bell hooks wrote “The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination.” Both are in our love section, with six more.
Give February an hour everyone joins
A live host runs Black History Trivia & Games for your team on your video call. Send your date and headcount for a plan within 24 hours.
