John Henrik Clarke quotes

Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it. (John Henrik Clarke)
Africa and its people are the most written about and the least understood of all of the world's people. This condition started in the 15th and the 16th centuries with the beginning of the slave trade system. The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
The acceptance of the facts of African-American history and the African-American historian as a legitimate part of the academic community did not come easily. Slavery ended and left its false images of black people intact. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
As the eldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, I was constantly troubled by a collage of North American southern behaviors and notions in reference to the inhumanity of people. There were questions that I did not know how to ask but could, in my young, unsophisticated way, articulate a series of answers. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
I question the political judgement of those who would have the nerve to paint Christ white with his obvious African nose, lips and wooly hair. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
Religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the hand maiden of conquerors. Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, the in your imagination God suppose to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are but, more importantly, what they must be. (John Henrik Clarke)
We have been educated into believing someone else's concept of the deity, and someone else's standard of beauty. You have the right to practice any religion and politics in a way that best suits your freedom, your dignity, and your understanding. And once you do that, you don't apologize. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
A people's relationship to their heritage is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
In order to have a charismatic leader, you have to have a charismatic program. Because if you have a charismatic program, then if you can read you can lead. When the leader gets killed while you're reading from page 13 of your charismatic program, you can bury the man with honors, then continue the plan by reading from page 14. Let's keep on. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
The first light of human consciousness and the world's first civilizations were in Africa. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
Malcolm X found the language that communicated across the board, from college professor to floor sweeper, all at the same time, without demeaning the intellect of either. (John Henrik Clarke)
When the early Europeans first met Africans, at the crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
She was not a white woman. She was not a Greek... Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
It is unfortunate that so much of the history of Africa has been written by conquerors, foreigners, missionaries and adventurers. The Egyptians left the best record of their history written by local writers. View quote
John Henrik Clarke
When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey's avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state's sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment. View quote
John Henrik Clarke