This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Zitkala-Sa, also Zitkala-Ša, missionary-given name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin NULL
The racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings.
The absolute demonstration of man’s mastery of fate and command of all condition - the victory of man - all men in this racial man, this elder brother of mankind in his triumph over sin, fear and death! But one thing had remained in my mind as necessary to prove to the mass of men to-day man’s absolute supremacy over death in all its forms as an attribute of his oneness with God, with Eternal Life, Perfect Love, Perfect Justice, Omniscience and Omnipotence.
Absolute | Character | Day | Death | Eternal | Fate | Fear | God | Justice | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mankind | Men | Mind | Omnipotence | Omniscience | Oneness | Sin | Fate |
Franz Boas, fully Franz Uri Boas
The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.
Ancestry | Behavior | Character | Individual | Wisdom |
Peace comes only from loving, from mutual self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness. Few today have humility or wisdom enough to know the world's deep need of love. We are too much possessed by national and racial and cultural pride.
Enough | Forgetfulness | Humility | Love | Need | Peace | Pride | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Wisdom | World |
I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias.
Children | Courage | Example | Good | Man | Prejudice | Will | Wisdom | Words | Think |
Please stop using the word “Negro”... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven varieties of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.
Waldo Beach, fully William Waldo Beach
It is not just negative inertia and caution which lie behind racial discrimination, but the positive counterfaiths which produce them. The “conflicting valuations” turn out to be a warfare of the gods in the soul of man. Ultimately the racial problem is not one of hypocrisy but idolatry.
Not the extremists but the great, white midstream America - i.e. Christian America - produces and preserves the racial chasm in American society.
Society |
No man has a moral right to use his property, a creature of God, against the children of God. Racial discrimination even in the use of purely private property, is immoral at least as transgressing the supreme law of charity.
Deprivation of the right of association with his fellow-men is the basic and fundamental reason for the immorality of racial segregation.
Association | Men | Reason | Right | Association |
The inseparable twin of racial injustice is economic injustice.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
The sin of racial pride still represents the most basic challenge to the American conscience. We cannot dodge this challenge without renouncing our highest moral pretentions.
Challenge | Conscience | Pride | Sin |
Who are the really disloyal? Those who inflame racial hatreds, who sow religious and class dissensions. those who subvert the Constitution by violating the freedom of the ballot box. Those who make a mockery of majority rule by the use of the filibuster. Those who impair democracy by denying equal educational facilities. Those who frustrate justice by lynch law or by making a farce of jury trials. Those who deny freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly. Those who demand special favors against the interest of the commonwealth. Those who regard public office as a source of private gain. Those who exalt the military over the civil. Those who for selfish and private purposes stir up national antagonisms and expose the world to the ruin of war.
Democracy | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Justice | Law | Majority | Mockery | Office | Public | Regard | Rule | Speech | Trials | War | World |
Race prejudice, in its gravest and most typical form, is the passing judgment of criminality or of essential inferiority upon all the members of a racial or ethnic group, with no sufficient intellectual motive for such a judgment.
Inferiority | Judgment | Prejudice | Race |
Exaggerated self-importance is deemed an individual fault, but a racial virtue.
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, Muslim name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
We were truly all the same (brothers) - because their belief in one God had removed the “white” from their minds, the “white” from their behavior, and the “white” from their attitudes... Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth - the only way left to American to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.
If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.