I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit.
Carter G. WoodsonRead
The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the struggle for economic empowerment and the dire consequences of failing to achieve it.
Carter G. Woodson emphasizes the critical choice that African Americans face in striving for economic and social advancement. He suggests that they must either actively engage in productive labor and entrepreneurship to elevate their status within society or risk falling into poverty and despair. The quote underscores the urgent need for self-determination and participation in the economic sphere as a means of avoiding a grim future.
Themes
Economic EmpowermentSocial AdvancementManufacturersMerchantsPaupers
In practice
Example use cases
During a community meeting discussing economic initiatives.
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If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do.
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Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.
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The different ness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess.
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This assumption of Negro leadership in the ghetto, then, must not be confined to matters of religion, education, and social uplift; it must deal with such fundamental forces in life as make these things possible.
Carter G. WoodsonRead
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