CLASSIC BOOK REIEW: “Reading Between The Lies” by Dick Gregory
“Slavery in America didn’t start with black folks. In the 1500’s, peoples from Spain and Portugal were over here enslaving Indians. That’s what they called the natives living here, Indians, because when the dummy Christopher Columbus came here, this fool gets lost and all of a sudden he done ‘discovered’ something. He thought he had reached India, and the mistake stuck. So, they took those poor ‘Indians’ from their homes and sent them every which way to work in mines and fields in the Caribbean, Peru and Panama — the ones who hadn’t already dies from being exposed to European germs, that is.”
“AFTER Vesey and Turner, the revolts kept up. In 1835, whites hanged a bunch of slaves and whipped others to death because they were about to rebel. In 1853, in South Carolina, twenty-five hundred slaves got ready to fight, but one free black man informed on them.”
FREDERICK DOUGLAS. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas”
“SLAVES are like other people and imbibe prejudices quite common to others. They think their own better than others. Many, under the influence of this prejudice, think their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some cases, when the very reverse is true. Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness of his own over the others . . . It was so on our plantation. When Colonel Lloyd’s slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters; Colonel Lloyd’s slaves contenting that he was the richest, and Mr. Jepson’s slaves that he was the smartest and most of a man. … They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered being bad enough to be ; but to be a poor man’s slave, but to be a poor man’s slave was a disgrace indeed!”
FREDERICK DOUGLASS:
YOU ARE not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
IT IS EASIER TO BUILD STRONG CHILDREN THAN TO REPAIR BROKEN MEN.
LIBERTY is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.
I PREFER to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
IF THERE IS NO STRUGGLE, THERE IS NO PROGRESS.
WHERE JUSTICE IS DENIED, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
A MAN’S RIGHTS rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
EDUCATION means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.
A SLAVE is someone who sits down, and waits for someone to free them.
ONCE YOU LEARN TO READ, YOU WILL BE FREE FOREVER.
THERE IS NO NEGRO PROBLEM. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution.
DICK GREGORY:
LOVE IS MAN’S NATURAL ENDOWMENT, BUT HE DOESN’T know how to use it. He refuses to recognize the power of love because of his love of power.
THE MOST DIFFICULT THING TO GET PEOPLE TO DO IS TO ACCEPT THE OBVIOUS.
IF ALL YOU CAN DO is judge a person by their appearance, because you don’t have the spirit to judge someone from within, you’re in trouble.
ONE OF THE THINGS I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.
EDUCATION means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge.
FEAR AND GOD DO NOT OCCUPY THE SAME SPACE.
WHEN I TUNE IN to my beautiful self, I get happiness. Everything in the universe belongs to me.
I NEVER LEARNED hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.
POOR is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.
THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS IS THEY’RE GONE.
LUCK is opportunity meeting up with preparation. So you must prepare yourself to be lucky.
THE UNITED STATES is the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet.
THE FREE MAN IS THE MAN WITH NO FEARS.
TRUTH IS THE BABY OF THE WORLD. IT NEVER GETS OLD.
IF YOU TAKE 12 waters from the coconut — not the ones you buy in the store, although that’s good — but fresh coconuts, the little brown one with three eyes, if you take 12 of those within 24 hours, your blood will go back to the way it was when you were born.
WHENEVER the dollar is held supreme and capitalistic interests dominate, a higher value will always be placed upon property rights than upon human rights.
TWO GREAT MEN