“Our nation bringing slaves from Africa was the biggest hate crime of all. Then, when the slaves were freed, there wasn't anywhere for them to go. Then came the reign of terror by the KKK that never really ended. Then there is the fact that none of this stuff is taught in American History, at least not in detail.”

— Margaret Cho

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, RACISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS

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Margaret Cho 179

American stand-up comedian 1968

Related quotes

“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

Attributed to Tubman in Dorothy Winbush Riley, My Soul Looks Back 'Less I Forget https://books.google.com/books?id=KpcLAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22c.+1865%22 p. 148 (1993). Riley gives a date of "c. 1865" but offers no citation. No source from earlier than 1993 is known. Quoted in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (1999) by Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah, p. 299. Tubman specialists like Jean H. Humez and Kate Clifford Larson deem this one completely spurious. See "Bogus Tubman," by Steve Perisho http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2014/03/bogus-tubman-i-freed-thousands-of.html.
Disputed
Variant: I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.

“The greatest blow for freedom that was ever struck in the world's history, perhaps, was when Abraham Lincoln decided that the slaves of the South were to be free and he freed them. The South collapsed. The gentlemen who could spend their time fighting, sure of supplies from slave-tended lands, began to starve and go ragged. Their homes began to fall into ruin and their families to be hungry. Their morale was broken. The war was really won by the pen upon the paper which wrote these words, "are and henceforward shall be free."”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 193

“…the white man is being systematically indoctrinated into believing that he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro. Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the Negro increased when he was transported to America. He was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa; even the idea did not exist in Africa. The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually as well as personally. The Negroes were sold from a harsh slavery into a milder one. Slavery was basic to the African way of life, to the point that slaves were the actual money of the African economy. Elsewhere, gold and silver served as money; in Africa, it was slaves…”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), pp. 3-4

“Our hero came from Nowhere — he wasn't going Anywhere and he got kicked off Somewhere.”

Buster Keaton (1895–1966) American actor and filmmaker

The High Sign (1921, co-written with Edward F. Cline)

“If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

St. 1
"Stanzas on Freedom" (1843)
Context: If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?

“What debt [of slavery]? I never enslaved anyone in my life. Look, if you really look at history, the Portuguese didn’t even step foot in Africa. The blacks themselves turned over the slaves.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

In an interview on TV Cultura https://www.poder360.com.br/eleicoes/bolsonaro-sobre-ditadura-ferida-que-precisa-ser-cicatrizada-esquece/ on 30 July 2018. Bolsonaro Says Black Brazilians Aren’t Owed Anything Over Slavery https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-31/brazil-candidate-bolsonaro-minimizes-slavery-praises-trump. Bloomberg (31 July 2018).

“[A]sk the slaves themselves how they were freed, and they will say, “Lincoln’s proclamation.” The testimony of freed people before the joint committee on reconstruction—about how they became free is uniform. They were well aware that the Fugitive Slave Laws and Constitutional provisions for the rendition of slaves were still in force. The position of runaways remained perilous. The Emancipation Proclamation resolved that.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Tom Mackaman (2013)

“Men who did not know that they were slaves do not know that they have been freed.”

Milton Mayer (1908–1986) American journalist

Source: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 (1955), p. 62; cited in: Quotable Quotes: They Thought They Were Free http://econengineer.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/quotable-quotes-they-thought-they-were-free/ by John@EconEngineer in: The Economical Engineer (1 July 2012)

“One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Civil Rights Address

“At least black people knew when they were slaves; you remain clueless.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

No Refunds (2007)

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Margaret Cho 179

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