“Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for hell.”

As quoted in Chanel (1987) by Jean Leymarie
Context: Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.

"On Works of Mercy and Compassion, Considered as The Proofs of True Religion", St. 6
Miscellaneous Poems (1773)
Context: Here, all ye learned, full of all Dispute,
Of true and false Religion lies the Root.
The Mind of Christ, when He became a Man,
With all Its Tempers, forms its real Plan,
The Sheep from Goats distinguishing full well; —
His Love is Heav'n, and Want of It is Hell.

Source: A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), p. 70

Quoted by Alex Haley, after a college campus speech, in the epilogue to The Autobiography.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

Source: Lady Midnight

Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

As quoted by James Baldwin, “Highroad to Destiny,” a chapter in Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Profile, edited by C. Eric Lincoln, New York, NY, Hill & Wang, 1993, p. 97, (Rev. King speech to a black congregation in St. Louis), reprinted from the February, 1961 issue of Harper’s magazine under the title: “The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King.”
1960s

"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Context: Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird