Quote Templates

Coretta Scott King - Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.

Chadwick Boseman - Understanding history is one of many ways to break the cycle. Lift up/amplify Black voices. Support Black owned businesses. Reach back. Mentor.

Richard Wright - We Black folk, our history, and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America.

Richard Wright - What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is. If we black folk perish, America will perish.

Kamala Harris - Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all, including Black women who are often, too often overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbon

Shirley Chisholm - In the end, anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing—anti-humanism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

Fatimata Cham - Liberation lies within us and will not be formed from the current institutional structures we have in place for it never has.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham - Every Black person you meet is a miracle.

Tatiana Glover - Juneteenth is another moment for me and my loved ones to build an archive of truth and experience of Black folks.

Tanesha Grant - As Black people, we are told we don’t deserve our own holidays rooted in our own history. Everything is whitewashed.

Brandon Gonzalez - Studying the blueprints of liberation, one can map out the ways we as The Global African Diaspora have continued to resist and exist under regimes of anti-Black terror.

Kwame Nkruma - 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.

Theodorea Regina Berry - The proclamation notes that freedom shall not be repressed. This is what I believe to be the primary significance of Juneteenth.

Michelle Obama - There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

Harriet Tubman - Now I’ve been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.

Alan Keyes - The flag that was the symbol of slavery on the high seas for a long time was not the Confederate battle flag, it was sadly the Stars and Stripes.

Langston Hughes - I swear to the Lord I still can’t see why democracy means everybody but me.

Frederick Douglass - Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Malcom X - You can’t separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Desmond Tutu - My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

Kevin Bales - Slavery is theft—theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any property or produce, theft even of the children a slave might have borne.

Harriet Tubman - 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.

John Quincy Adams - Where annual elections end where slavery begins.

Haye Turner - My daddy told me that they whooped and hollered and bored holes in trees with augers and stopped it up with [gun] powder and light and that would be their blast for the celebration.

James Baldwin - If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.

Martin Luther King Jr. - What matters is not how long you live…but how you live

Martin Luther King Jr. - Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Martin Luther King Jr. - Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King Jr. - Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Aretha Franklin - We all require and want respect, man or woman, Black or white. It's our basic human right.

Zoé Samudzi - We are not ready to fight because we love fighting. We are ready to fight because we are worth fighting for.

Paulo Coelho - One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.

Jim Ryun - Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

Karen Lamb - A year from now, you may wish you had started today.

Doe Zantamata - Every morning starts a new page in your story. Make it a great one today.

Abu Bakr - It is a matter of shame that in the morning the birds should be awake earlier than you.

Toni Morrison - Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Shirley Chisholm - In the end, anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.

Fred Hampton - If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don’t deserve to win.

Martin Luther King Jr. - Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Harriet Tubman - I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.

Fannie Lou Hamer - Nobody’s until everybody’s

Pharrell Williams - The day we were free—everyone was free. Why not make it a paid holiday? We deserve that…We want a day that is inclusive to everyone.

Maya Angelou - You may kill me with your hatefulness. But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Colin Kaepernick - I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color.

Frederick Douglass - I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

Rosa Parks - I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free… so other people would be also free.

James Brown - Say it loud. I’m black and I’m proud!

Dr. Greg Carr - Every June 19th is an opportunity for us to continue the momentum of memory, and the parade and the self-determination movements.