African American Reconstruction Quotes & Sayings

wants to accept that someone close might have taken his or her own life. Too much blame accrues to those left behind for it to be accommodated so easily. — John Connolly

To be honest, just trying to get everybody together in one room to get our picture taken for the back of the album, it took so long just to organize that. — David Pajo

From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyers in South Africa, but we were the only firm of African lawyers. For Africans, we were the firm of first choice and last resort. — Nelson Mandela

After Obama's victory, 395 new voting restrictions were introduced in 49 states from 2011 to 2015. Following the Tea Party's triumph in the 2010 elections, half the states in the country, nearly all of them under Republican control - from Texas to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania - passed laws making it harder to vote. The sudden escalation of efforts to curb voting rights most closely resembled the Redemption period that ended Reconstruction, when every southern state adopted devices like literacy tests and poll taxes to disenfranchise African-American voters. — Ari Berman

We recriminalized black life. Incarceration rates since the 1908s have gone through the roof, overwhelmingly black males, women and Hispanics to some extent. Essentially re-doing what happened under Reconstruction. That's the history of African Americans - so how can any one say there's no problem. Sure, racism is serious, but it's worse than that. — Noam Chomsky

The first time I ask him, have you had your cheekbones raised, have you had your nose changed? He denied it all. I was asking him to compare his face with what it looked like years ago. — Martin Bashir

I'm going to quit writing. — Sidney Poitier

The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since being shot by Booth was to have fallen into the hands of Carl Sandburg. — Edmund Wilson

Are we napping?" she asked.
"For a little," he said.
He wasn't napping. He concentrated every cell of his body on memorizing the weight of her against him, and the smell of her hair in the sun. His arms measured the slender curve of her torso. His fingers separated out a single strand of her hair. Her breathing slowed, easing, while his watchful heart chugged on, stupid and hungry, and the red bracelet stayed in his pocket. — Caragh M. O'Brien