Behold bleeding Africa, for three hundred years her bleeding side has flowed, and yet flows on, unstaunched by the humanity of the nations. Behold this accursed crime, which has crawled up with beastly impudence, and enthroned itself as one of the laws of nations -- that Christendom had a common right to plunder, burn, murder, enslave irredeemably, and make property of the inhabitants of that ill-fated continent, in and through all coming generations for their posterity." --Alvan Stewart 1845

"Institution of slavery! Institution of horse-stealing and institution of highwaymen, sound equally sensible to a just and philosophical thinker." Alvan Stewart 1845

"To acknowledge the legacies of racism is not a call to be paralyzed by guilt or anger or division. Rather honesty is the beginning of the struggle to create relationships of trust and hope and a common social good from which healing might come." --Rita Nakashima Brook

"It would take the wisdom of the ages to see the profound impact that several centuries of preoccupation with undervaluing an entire race of people could have on the moral fiber of a nation, and on the national psyche." --John Hope Franklin, 1993

"For years the Negro has been taught that he is nobody, that his color is a sign of his biological depravity, that his being has been stamped with an indelible imprint of inferiority. All too few people realize how slavery and racial segregation have scared the soul and wounded the spirit of the black man." --Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967

"That Americans of African origin once wore the chains of chattels remains alive in the memory of both races and continues to separate them." --Andrew Hacker, 1992

"It is impossible to be raised in a society where white supremacy is one of the founding principles and not entertain racist notions. It's too deeply ingrained for any of us to boast of immunity." --Molly Secour

"It is only to the degree that we acknowledge and unearth the racist notions that lie hidden in all of us -- often just beneath the surface -- that we become 'less racist'." --Molly Secour

"Not even churches who profess to follow the despised Nazerene, whose home on earth was among the lowly and despised, have yet conquered the feeling of color madness." -Frederick Douglas -- a runaway slave who became a world famous abolitionist and statesman.

"Taking advantage of the general disposition in this country to impute crime to color, white men color their faces to commit crime, and wash off the hated color to escape punishment." --Frederick Douglas (1880's).

"While we recognize the color line as a hurtful force -- a mountain barrier to our progress, wounding our bleeding feet with its flinty rocks at every step, we do not despair. We are a hopeful people." --Frederick Douglas