Black Education Quotes

Do you know who the real hypocrite is? It's the federal government and the Justice Department. It's a fraud; it's a lie. They have no interest in the education of black children. They are only interested in the politics of it.

I grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina, which has the proud distinction of being the home to two of the eight Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the state: South Carolina State University and Claflin University. When I was a kid riding around town with my grandfather, we often drove by the colleges.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have played an important role in enriching the lives of not just African Americans, but our entire country.

Doing away with separate black colleges meets resistance from alumni and other blacks.

I have never seen any good resulting from educating the Negro.

During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.

What we, as black people, need to do is we need to worry about our education.

I love 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' That was like the only black book we read in high school.

They call Howard University the 'capstone of black education.' Howard was one of the historically black colleges where people want to go and send their children. Both of my grandfathers went through the medical school, and being in D.C., not far from New York City, it was a natural choice for me.

Our nation's oldest sin and deepest crime is the isolation of minority children - black children, in particular - in schools that are not only segregated but shamefully unequal.

I went to a historically black college.

I can't talk about the education of black children if I ignored two of my nieces who were a couple of grade levels behind. I believe that charity begins at home, and I take seriously the role of a godfather to fill the gap when the parents aren't doing their job.

It it weren't for HBCUs, 'A Different World' wouldn't exist.

We need our HBCUs. The youth need our HBCUs. The elders need our HBCUs.

We don't know whether we'll be able to go to school because of budgetary constraints; that might not be bad because the schools are not doing anything of value for our children in the first place. Jesus said you can tell a tree by the fruit it bears and if the educational system of White America is good for us, where is the fruit from that system that says so?

Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent.

The working-class Africans are not doing very well, and one of the problems is their education is so shocking. It is routinely said it is a result of apartheid. Deliberately, black people were not allowed to know too much. They could read and write a bit to be useful, but that's about it.

Federal resources are vital to the health of our HBCUs.

At University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, I was one of the first Blacks there. I didn't go to a Black school until my junior year of college, when I went to Fisk University.