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.
----------
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!)
