
Wright Jr. 87 Years Behind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography. 1965
1960s, The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement (1967)
Wright Jr. 87 Years Behind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography. 1965
1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: So that saying, "in the struggle between the negro and the crocodile," &c., is made up from the idea that down where the crocodile inhabits a white man can't labor; it must be nothing else but crocodile or negro; if the negro does not the crocodile must possess the earth; [Laughter; ] in that case he declares for the negro. The meaning of the whole is just this: As a white man is to a negro so is a negro to a crocodile; and as the negro may rightfully treat the crocodile, so may the white man rightfully treat the negro. This very dear phrase coined by its author, and so dear that he deliberately repeats it in many speeches, has a tendency to still further brutalize the negro, and to bring public opinion to the point of utter indifference whether men so brutalized are enslaved or not.
1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
1960s, Address to Local 815, Teamsters and the Allied Trades Council (1967)
Source: Writings, The Biblical Philosophy of History (1969), p. 88
The motive is not a desire to elevate the negro, but to humiliate and degrade those of mixed blood; not a desire to bring the negro up, but to cast the mulatto and the quadroon down by forcing him below an arbitrary and hated color line.
1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)