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" To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed. "

John Henrik Clarke

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" Anytime you turn on your own concept of God, you are no longer a free man. No one needs to put chains on your body, because the chains are on your mind. "

John Henrik Clarke

" In the closing years of the nineteenth century, African-American historians began to look at their people's history from their vantage point and their point of view. "

John Henrik Clarke

" The role of religions in the domination and destruction of African civilizations was ruthless... Islam was as guilty as all the rest. "

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. "

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. "

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. "

John Henrik Clarke

" The first light of human consciousness and the world's first civilizations were in Africa. "

John Henrik Clarke

" I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived. "

John Henrik Clarke

" My daddy wanted me to be a farmer; feel the smoothness of Alabama clay and become one of the first blacks in my town to own land. But, I was worried about my history being caked with that southern clay, and I subscribed to a different kind of teaching and learning in my bones and in my spirit. "

John Henrik Clarke

" Egypt gave birth to what later would become known as 'Western Civilization,' long before the greatness of Greece and Rome. "

John Henrik Clarke

" A people's relationship to their heritage is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother. "

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. "

John Henrik Clarke

" Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world. "

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. "

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. "

John Henrik Clarke

" My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together. "

John Henrik Clarke

" 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

" 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. "

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. "

John Henrik Clarke

" A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson. "

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. "

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. "

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

" 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. "

John Henrik Clarke