Yesterday is gone, but we must hold on to it anyway. Its meaning is the sense of our lives. We must be careful not to fictionalize and romanticize our stories. We must look at the beauty and the failures of our history with equal love and understanding.— Walter Mosley, Black novelist

I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery; of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved.— Mildred Taylor, Black writer

The specificity of black culture—namely, those features that distinguish black culture from other cultures—lies in both the African and American character of black people’s attempts to sustain their mental sanity and spiritual health, social life and political struggle in the midst of a slaveholding, whitesupremacist civilization that viewed itself as the most enlightened, free, tolerant and democratic experiment in human history.— Cornel West, Black scholar

These quotes are included in "Language is a Place of Struggle": Great Quotes by People of Color edited by Tram Nguyen.