A Quote a Day

For Black History Month

 

            Today's Snack: Does racial injustice make you mad? Then you should make Mad Cookies! This is the recipe to make, and eat, when you just feel like hitting someone. Instead, hit the cookie dough! You won't hurt it! In fact, you'll make the cookies even tastier. Don't get mad - get cookies!

Preheat the oven to 350°. Mix in a big bowl 3 cups of quick-cooking oats, 1½ cups of brown sugar, 1½ cups of flour, 1½ cups of butter or margarine (leave it out on the counter for a few minutes to soften, or soften in the microwave), and 1½ teaspoons baking powder. Wash your hands, rinse and dry them well.

Now comes the fun part - go mad! Pound, punch, squish and knead (moosh it with your hands) the batter. The longer the dough is mixed, and the more energy you put into mixing it, the better the cookies will taste!

Roll spoonfuls of dough into balls, place on an ungreased cookie sheet, and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

 

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Print out these quotes,

cut them apart,

and tape a new one to your bathroom mirror

every day in February;

try to memorize them!

 

 

If you really want to be a master of understanding race relations in the United States, then for Black History Month, you really ought to memorize one good quote for every day.

 

Ask an adult to help you understand some of these that are a little more complex. You never know: you BOTH might learn something!

 

Print this out and tape it to your bathroom mirror. Every morning while you're brushing your teeth, read and re-read each quote. By the end of the month, you should know them by heart.

 

 

Feb. 1

 

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

 

-- Minister and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967

 

 

Feb. 2

 

The moment the blacks were let into the white world - let out of the voiceless and faceless cages of their ghettos, singing, walking, talking, dancing, writing, and orating their image of America and of Americans - the white world was suddenly challenged to match its practice to its preachments.

 

-- Activist Eldridge Cleaver, 1968

 

 

            Feb. 3

 

            In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

 

-- Black leader Booker T. Washington, 1895

 

 

            Feb. 4

 

            There are complexities in every racial situation. Never are such matters neat and simple. They can't be. For they reach deep into history, memory, beliefs, values - or into the hollow place where values should be.

-- Writer, educator and activist Lillian Smith, 1949

 

 

            Feb. 5

 

            Simply removing formal impediments to equality is not enough; the pecking order thrives on hidden power and invisible rules.

-- Yale professor Harlon L. Dalton, 1995

 

 

            Feb. 6

 

            The whole barrier exists because most people never come together and sit down at a table . . . join together, break bread together, and celebrate their differences and their likenesses.

 

-- Entertainer and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, 1998

 

 

            Feb. 7

 

            I stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (on Aug. 28, 1963, the day of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech) looking toward the Washington Monument. . . . There were three hundred thousand people there and everybody felt the same way . . . for that suspended, isolated few hours in time there was more love in that mall than the world has ever known. The galvanizing of what the civil rights movement was about occurred on that day.

 

-- Actor/entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., 1989

 

 

            Feb. 8

 

            Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.

 

-- Author Maya Angelou, 1986

 

 

Feb. 9

 

To those Arkansans who ask how long the state will have to deal with the legacy of Little Rock (school segregation scandal): Until justice is the same for every human being, whether he or she is black or white, we will deal with it. Until the same rules apply to get a bank loan for every person regardless of who he or she is, we will deal with it. As long as there are whites who turn around and see a black person coming and it brings fear to their hearts, we'll deal with it. And as long as there are blacks who have resentment toward a white person, we'll deal with it.

 

-- Gov. Mike Huckabee, 1997

 

 

Feb. 10

 

            The ideals that bind us together are as old as our nation, but so are the forces that pull us apart.

 

-- President Bill Clinton, 1997

 

 

Feb. 11

 

Young people these days . . . want to keep it real. And keeping it real means, in fact, understanding that the white supremacy you thought you could push back permeates every nook and cranny of this nation so deeply that you ought to wake up and recognize how deep it is.

 

-- Actor Harry Belafonte, 1997

 

 

Feb. 12

 

            Prejudice comes from being in the dark; sunlight disinfects it.

 

--World heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, 1996

 

 

Feb. 13

 

            Racism is . . . a negation of the deepest identity of the human being, who is a person created in the image and likeness of God.

 

-- Pope John Paul, 1997

 

 

Feb. 14

 

Daddy taught me that racism was a sickness and to have compassion for racist whites as I would have compassion for a polio victim. Racism wasn't a problem with me, he told me, it was a problem they had.

 

-- Atlanta mayor, minister, congressman, ambassador Andrew Young, 1996

 

 

Feb. 15

 

Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.

 

-- First black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, 1970

 

 

Feb. 16

 

If we tell ourselves that the only problem is hate, we avoid facing the reality that it is mostly nice, nonhating people who perpetuate racial inequality.

-- Editor Ellis Cose, 1997

 

 

Feb. 17

 

Knowing that I would not be admitted to certain tournaments protected me from direct rebuffs. . . . No player ever refused to appear on court with me. No official ever called me a name. But the indirect rebuffs and innuendoes left their scars.

-- Tennis great Arthur Ashe, 1981

 

 

Feb. 18

 

The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

 

-- Escaped slave and Abolition leader Frederick Douglass, 1852

 

 

Feb. 19

 

Long described as America's original sin, slavery is also our shadow: dogging our steps forward, projecting in black against the sunlight of democratic ideals.

 

-- Editor and columnist Jonathan Alter, 1997

 

 

Feb. 20

 

Certainly it was no accident that slavery was the major moral issue the signers of the Declaration (of Independence) failed to address when they proclaimed liberty, equality, and justice for all, and went home to oversee their slaves. Just as it is no accident that our public dialogue on race today is more a monologue of frustration and rage.

 

-- Basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 1996

 

 

Feb. 21

 

Most of us came here in chains and most of you came here to escape your chains. Your freedom was our slavery, and therein lies the bitter difference in the way we look at life.

 

-- Writer John Oliver Killens, 1984

 

 

Feb. 22

 

There is no reason that black men should be expected to be more patient, more forbearing, more farseeing than whites; indeed, quite the contrary.

 

-- Author James Baldwin, 1963

 

 

Feb. 23

 

The I Have a Dream speech is really a message of hope, whose effect was to comfort the disturbed, but not without disturbing the comfortable.

 

-- Martin Luther King's daughter Bernice A. King, 1993

 

 

Feb. 24

 

I have come to know race as a sealed dwelling with windows but no doors. One can look out but never leave.

 

-- Trans Africa founder Randal Robinson, 1998

 

 

 

Feb. 25

 

The quest for black identity involves self-respect and self-regard, realms inseparable from, yet not identical to, political power and economic status.

 

-- Harvard professor Cornel West, 1993

 

 

Feb. 26

 

The anger of the oppressed man is a sign of health, not pathology. It says: "I am condemning you for doing wrong to me."

 

-- Alexander Thomas, M.D., 1972

 

 

Feb. 27

 

Slavery robbed our black ancestors of trust and other values of social glue as much as it robbed them of dignity.

 

-- Columnist Clarence Page, 1996

 

 

 

Feb. 28

 

Racism was not just a black problem. It was America's problem. And until the country solved it, I was not going to let bigotry make me a victim instead of a full human being.

 

-- Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, 1995

 

(IN A LEAP YEAR, MAKE UP YOUR OWN QUOTE FOR FEB. 29!)