Assata: in her own words
Context: My name is Assata ("she who struggles") Olugbala ( "for the people" ) Shakur ("the thankful one"), and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government's policy towards people of color. I am an ex political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984. I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U. S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO program. because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it "greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.
“One sharp stern struggle and the slaves of centuries are free.”
The Patriot, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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Gerald Massey 6
British poet 1828–1907Related quotes
Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 47
“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
“Good slaves are free, but bad free men are slaves of many passions.”
As quoted by Stobaeus, iii.1.18
1860s, Letter to Horace Greeley (1862)
Context: My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
Eliud Kipchoge (2018) cited in: " Eliud Kipchoge & David Bedford | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc00mDtzIJU" in Oxford Union, 5 January 2018.
Progress In Religion (2000)
Context: In the time of Jesus and for many centuries afterwards, there was a free market in human bodies. The institution of slavery was based on the legal right of slave-owners to buy and sell their property in a free market. Only in the nineteenth century did the abolitionist movement, with Quakers and other religious believers in the lead, succeed in establishing the principle that the free market does not extend to human bodies. The human body is God's temple and not a commercial commodity. And now in the twenty-first century, for the sake of equity and human brotherhood, we must maintain the principle that the free market does not extend to human genes. Let us hope that we can reach a consensus on this question without fighting another civil war.
“Yes; these are people struggling to be free, and they are struggling rightly to be free.”
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1884/may/12/vote-of-censure in the House of Commons (12 May 1884) during the Mahdist War.
1880s
Context: The right hon. Gentleman quoted repeatedly this declaration... to keep [rebellion] out of Egypt it is necessary to put it down in the Soudan; and that is the task the right hon. Gentleman desires to saddle upon England. Now, I tell hon. Gentlemen this—that that task means the reconquest of the Soudan. I put aside for the moment all questions of climate, of distance, of difficulties, of the enormous charges, and all the frightful loss of life. There is something worse than that involved in the plan of the right hon. Gentleman. It would be a war of conquest against a people struggling to be free. ["No, no!"] Yes; these are people struggling to be free, and they are struggling rightly to be free.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities (2013)