Carter G. Woodson Quotes & Sayings

The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. — Carter G. Woodson

If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own. — Carter G. Woodson

One can cite cases of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists. — Carter G. Woodson

The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there. — Carter G. Woodson

Negro banks, as a rule, have failed because the people, taught that their own pioneers in business cannot function in this sphere, withdrew their deposits. — Carter G. Woodson

They are anxious to have everything the white man has even if it is harmful. — Carter G. Woodson

What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice. — Carter G. Woodson

In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them. — Carter G. Woodson

If Liberia has failed, then, it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery. — Carter G. Woodson

Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority. — Carter G. Woodson

In schools of theology Negroes are taught the interpretation of the Bible worked out by those who have justified segregation and winked at the economic debasement of the Negro at times almost to the point of starvation. — Carter G. Woodson

This assumption of Negro leadership in the ghetto, then, must not be confined to matters of religion, education, and social uplift; it must deal with such fundamental forces in life as make these things possible. — Carter G. Woodson

At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do. — Carter G. Woodson

For me, education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better. — Carter G. Woodson

To handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and crime. — Carter G. Woodson

The real servant of the people must live among them, think with them, feel for them, and die for them. — Carter G. Woodson

They do not like to hear such expressions as "Negro literature," "Negro poetry," "African art," or "thinking black"; and, roughly speaking, we must concede that such things do not exist. These things did not figure in the courses which they pursued in school, and why should they? "Aren't we all Americans? Then, whatever is American is as much the heritage of the Negro as of any other group in — Carter G. Woodson

Let us banish fear. We have been in this mental state for three centuries. I am a radical. I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me. — Carter G. Woodson

You cannot serve people by giving them orders as to what to do. The real servant of the people must live among them, think with them, feel for them, and die for them ... The servant of the people, unlike the leader, is not on a high horse trying to carry the people to some designated point to which he would like to go for his own advantage. The servant of the people is down among them, living as they live, doing what they do and enjoying what they enjoy. He may be a little better informed than some of the other members of the group; it may be that he as had some experience they have not had, but in spite of this advantage he should have more humility than those whom he serves. — Carter G. Woodson

Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior? — Carter G. Woodson

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history. — Carter G. Woodson

The present system under the control of the whites trains the Negro to be white and at the same time convinces him of the impropriety or the impossibility of his becoming white ... the Negros will have no outlet but to go down a blind alley, if the sort of education which they are now receiving is to enable them to find the way out of their present difficulties. — Carter G. Woodson

Truth must be dug up from the past and presented to the circle of scholastics in scientific form and then through stories and dramatizations that will permeate our educational system. — Carter G. Woodson

The education of the Negroes, then, the most important thing in the uplift of the Negroes, is almost entirely in the hands of those who have enslaved them and now segregate them. — Carter G. Woodson

It is strange, then, that the friends of truth and the promoters of freedom have not risen up against the present propaganda in the schools and crushed it. — Carter G. Woodson

When a white man sees persons of his own race tending downward to a level of disgrace he does not rest until he works out some plan to lift such unfortunates to higher ground; but the Negro forgets the delinquents of his race and goes his way to feather his own nest, as he has done in leaving the masses in the popular churches. — Carter G. Woodson

Practically all of the successful Negroes in this country are of the uneducated type or of that of Negroes who have had no formal education at all. The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people. If after leaving school they have the opportunity to give out to Negroes what traducers of the race would like to have it learn such persons may thereby earn a living at teaching or preaching what they have been taught but they never become a constructive force in the development of the race. The so-called school, then, becomes a questionable factor in the life of this despised people. As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to — Carter G. Woodson

By their peculiar "reasoning," too, theologians have sanctioned most of the ills of the ages. They justified the Inquisition, serfdom, and slavery. Theologians of our time defend segregation and the annihilation of one race by the other. They have drifted away from righteousness into an effort to make wrong seem to be right. — Carter G. Woodson

The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people. — Carter G. Woodson

And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race. — Carter G. Woodson

The so-called radical Negroes who have read and misunderstood Karl Marx and his disciples and would solve the political as well as the economic problems of the race by an immediate application of these principles. History shows that although large numbers of people have actually tried to realize such pleasant dreams, they have in the final analysis come back to a social program based on competition. — Carter G. Woodson

Of the hundreds of Negro high schools recently examined by an expert in the United States Bureau of Education only eighteen offer a course taking up the history of the Negro, and in most of the Negro colleges and universities where the Negro is thought of, the race is studied only as a problem or dismissed as of little consequence. For example, an officer of a Negro university, thinking that an additional course on the Negro should be given there, called upon a Negro Doctor of Philosophy of the faculty to offer such work. He promptly informed the officer that he knew nothing about the Negro. He did not go to school to waste his time that way. He went to be educated in a system which dismisses the Negro as a nonentity. — Carter G. Woodson

In the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent. — Carter G. Woodson

The race needs workers, not leaders. — Carter G. Woodson

Our most widely known scholars have been trained in universities outside of the South. — Carter G. Woodson

It may be well to repeat here the saying that old men talk of what they have done, young men of what they are doing, and fools of what they expect to do. The Negro race has a rather large share of the last mentioned class. — Carter G. Woodson

If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood
to hate himself. — Carter G. Woodson

The mere imparting of information is not education. — Carter G. Woodson

In the schools of business administration Negroes are trained exclusively in the psychology and economics of Wall Street and are, therefore, made to despise the opportunities to run ice wagons, push banana carts, and sell peanuts among their own people. Foreigners, who have not studied economics but have studied Negroes, take up this business and grow rich. — Carter G. Woodson

We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just. — Carter G. Woodson

If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do. — Carter G. Woodson

If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one. — Carter G. Woodson

If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto. — Carter G. Woodson

The different ness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess. — Carter G. Woodson

The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers. — Carter G. Woodson

In fact, the confidence of the people is worth more than money. — Carter G. Woodson

As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. — Carter G. Woodson

The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race. — Carter G. Woodson

They still have some money, and they have needs to supply. They must begin immediately to pool their earnings and organize industries to participate in supplying social and economic demands. — Carter G. Woodson

We have a wonderful history behind us ... If you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have this record, the world will say to you, 'You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else'. — Carter G. Woodson

The author takes the position that the consumer pays the tax, and as such every individual of the social order should be given unlimited opportunity to make the most of himself. — Carter G. Woodson

Let us banish fear. — Carter G. Woodson

Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves. — Carter G. Woodson

You must give your own story to the world. — Carter G. Woodson

Cooperation implies equality of the participants in the particular task at hand. — Carter G. Woodson

The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong. — Carter G. Woodson

No man knows what he can do until he tries. — Carter G. Woodson

I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit. — Carter G. Woodson

History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning. — Carter G. Woodson

The only question which concerns us here is whether these "educated" persons are actually equipped to face the ordeal before them or unconsciously contribute to their own undoing by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor. — Carter G. Woodson

Pecuniary embarrassment, he thought, was the cause of all evil to the blacks, for poverty kept them ignorant and their lack of enlightenment kept them degraded. — Carter G. Woodson

And crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The Negro thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race. — Carter G. Woodson

Exploitation of the Negro through economic restriction and segregation the present system is sound and will doubtless continue until this gives place to the saner policy of actual interracial cooperation
not the present farce of racial manipulation in which the Negro is a figurehead. — Carter G. Woodson

It is a common on occurrence to see a Negro well situated as a minister or teacher aspiring to a political appointment which temporarily pays little more than what he is receiving and offers no distinction except that of being earmarked as a Jim Crow job set aside for some Negro who has served well the purposes of the bosses as a wardheeler in a campaign. — Carter G. Woodson

Truth comes to us from the past, then, like gold washed down from the mountains. — Carter G. Woodson

Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination. — Carter G. Woodson

The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worth while, depresses — Carter G. Woodson

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated. — Carter G. Woodson

HISTORY shows, then, that as a result of these unusual forces in the education of the Negro he easily learns to follow the line of least resistance rather than battle against odds for what real history has shown to be the right course. — Carter G. Woodson

This crusade is much more important than the anti- lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom. — Carter G. Woodson

The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies. — Carter G. Woodson

When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary. — Carter G. Woodson

Our aim is to appeal to reason. ... Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is. — Carter G. Woodson

No people can go forward when the majority of those who should know better have chosen to go backward, but this is exactly what most of our misleaders do. — Carter G. Woodson

Some of the American whites, moreover, are just as far behind in this respect as are the Negroes who have had less opportunity to learn better. — Carter G. Woodson

THE "educated Negroes" have the attitude of contempt toward their own people because in their own as well as in their mixed schools Negroes are taught to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton and to despise the African. Of the hundreds of Negro high schools recently examined by an expert in the United States Bureau of Education only eighteen offer a course taking up the history of the Negro, — Carter G. Woodson

At a Negro summer school two years ago, a white instructor gave a course on the Negro, using for his text a work which teaches that whites are superior to the blacks. When asked by one of the students why he used such a textbook the instructor replied that he wanted them to get that point of view. Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority. The thought of the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies. If he happens to leave school after he masters the fundamentals, before he finishes high school or reaches college, he will naturally escape some of this bias and may recover in time to be of service — Carter G. Woodson