In this post, we’ll read some of the best Black History Month quotes which is an annual observance in the United States and several other countries to celebrate and honor the achievements, contributions, and history of African Americans.
Black History Month takes place every February in the United States and October in the United Kingdom, while other countries may observe it at different times of the year.
During the month, various events, programs, and activities take place to celebrate African American history and culture. These may include lectures, panel discussions, art exhibitions, film screenings, musical performances, and community gatherings.
Let’s read some of the most famous Black History Month quotes from notable and famous Black personalities.
Black History Month Quotes
1. “Black History Month must be more than just a month of remembrance; it should be a tribute to our history and reminder of the work that lies in the months and years ahead.” — Marty Meehan
2. “The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.” — Henry Louis Gates
3. “If the only time you think of me as a scientist is during Black History Month, then I must not be doing my job as a scientist.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson
4. “During Black History Month, I’m reminded yet again of the ways that the struggle for civil rights is interwoven with the struggle for workers’ rights.” — Tom Perez
5. “Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness.” — Ola Joseph
6. “For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.” — Dr. Maya Angelou
7. “We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. 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 Woodson
Best Black History Month Quotes
1. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker
2. “Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.” — Billie Holiday
3. “We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right.” — Aretha Franklin
4. “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” — Coretta Scott King
5. “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” — Michael Jordan
6. “I knew then and I know now, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it.” — Claudette Colvin
7. “If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.” — Beyonce Knowles
8. “One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.” — Barbara Jordan
Black History Month Quotes on Racism
1. “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man – the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel
2. “Racism isn’t born, folks, it’s taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list.” — Dennis Leary
3. “I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.” — Oprah Winfrey
4. “The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.” — Toni Morrison
5. “Racism separates, but it never liberates. Hatred generates fear, and fear once given a foothold binds, consumes, and imprisons. Nothing is gained from prejudice. No one benefits from racism.” — Thurgood Marshall
6. “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist.” — Angela Davis
7. “Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.” — William Lloyd Garrison
8. “Our nation is a rainbow – red, yellow, brown, black, and white – and we’re all precious in God’s sight.” — Jesse Jackson
Black History Month Quotes on America
1. “I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.” — Morgan Freeman
2. “What the people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise.” — Barbara Jordan
3. “We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation’s greatness.” — Yvette Clarke
4. “Won’t it be wonderful when Black history and Native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.” — Maya Angelou
5. “Black history isn’t a separate history. This is all of our history, this is American history, and we need to understand that.” — Karyn Parsons
6. “You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” — Malcolm X
7. “Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Black History Month Quotes on Freedom
1. “Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.” — Kwame Nkrumah
2. “I’m not quite sure what freedom is, but I know damn well what it ain’t. How have we gotten so silly, I wonder.” — Assata Shakur
3. “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” — Nelson Mandela
4. “I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.” — Harriet Tubman
Black History Month Quotes on Life
1. “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” — Muhammad Ali
2. “Life has two rules: number 1, never quit! Number 2, always remember rule number one.” — Duke Ellington
3. “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life.”
4. “Hold on to your dreams of a better life and stay committed to striving to realize it.” — Earl G. Graves, Sr.
5. “One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.” — James Earl Jones
6. “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” — Booker T. Washington
7. “It doesn’t bother me at all. Do I hold any hard feelings? Not at all. Life is too short to sit around and hold grudges. I don’t hold any whatsoever.” — Kobe Bryant
Black History Month Quotes for Students
1. “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” — Alice Walker
2. “Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.” — James Baldwin
3. “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” — Harriet Tubman
4. “Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.” — Wilma Rudolph
5. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” — Maya Angelou
6. “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.” — Maya Angelou
7. “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” — Oprah Winfrey
8. “One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.” — Michelle Obama
9. “Just don’t give up what you’re trying to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.” — Ella Fitzgerald
10. “A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” — Nelson Mandela
11. “Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.” — Colin Powell
Black History Month Quotes for Black Women
1. “Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living.” — Mary McLeod Bethune
2. “I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black; it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.” — June Jordan
3. “I need to see my own beauty and to continue to be reminded that I am enough, that I am worthy of love without effort, that I am beautiful, that the texture of my hair and that the shape of my curves, the size of my lips, the color of my skin, and the feelings that I have are all worthy and okay.” — Tracee Ellis Ross
4. “As black women, we’re always given these seemingly devastating experiences — experiences that could absolutely break us. But what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly. What we do as black women is take the worst situations and create from that point.” — Viola Davis
Black History Month Quotes on Strength
1. “You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.” — Nina Simone
2. “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” — Audre Lorde
3. “Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.” — Carol Moseley-Braun
4. “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.” — Rosa Parks
5. “We all have dreams. In order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort.” — Jesse Owens
Motivational Black History Month Quotes About Change
1. “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” — Angela Davis
2. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” — Barack Obama
3. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. — Muhammad Ali
4. “There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.” — Ernest J. Gaines
5. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin
Inspirational Black History Month Quotes
1. “Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” — Michael Jordan
2. “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” — Gwendolyn Brooks
3. “You have to believe in yourself when no one else does — that makes you a winner right there.” — Venus Williams
4. “If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.” — Colin Powell
5. “I am lucky that whatever fear I have inside me, my desire to win is always stronger.” — Serena Williams
6. “Don’t let anything stop you. There will be times when you’ll be disappointed, but you can’t stop.” — Sadie T. M. Alexander
7. “If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.” — James Baldwin
8. “I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.” — Madam C.J. Walker
Short Black History Month Quotes
1. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
2. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” — Shirley Chisholm
3. “There is no vaccine for racism.” — Kamala Harris
4. “Activism is my rent for living on the planet.” — Alice Walker
5. “The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.” — Eldridge Cleaver
6. “Don’t agonize, organize.” — Florynce Kennedy
7. “Stretch your mind and fly.” — Whitney M. Young Jr
8. “Character is power.” — Booker T. Washington
9. “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” — Mother Teresa
10. “All I know is I’ve tried my best.” — Tiger Woods
11. “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” — Desmond Tutu
12. “Freedom is never given; it is won.” — A. Philip Randolph
13. “It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.” — Aesop
14. “Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color.” — Unknown
15. “Even if it makes others uncomfortable, I will love who I am.” — Janelle Monáe
16. “The soul that is within me no man can degrade.” — Frederick Douglass
17. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Inspirational Short Black History Month Quotes
1. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” — Frederick Douglass
2. “You really can change the world if you care enough.” — Marian Wright Edelman
3. “Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.” — Dr. Mae Jemison
4. “Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us.” — Susan L. Taylor
5. “The best way to make dreams come true is to wake up.” — Mae C. Jemison
6. “If you don’t have confidence, you’ll always find a way not to win.” — Carl Lewis
7. “Be as you are and hope that it’s right.” — Dizzy Gillespie
8. “Have a vision. Be demanding.” — Colin Powell
9. “The time is always right to do what is right.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
10. “Each person must live their life as a model for others.” — Rosa Parks
These Black History Month quotes serve as a reminder of the ongoing struggle for racial equality and social justice and the need to continue learning, acknowledging, and celebrating the diverse experiences and voices within the African American community.
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