First African American Quotes

#1. In Obama's case, we've enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation's highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have 'the first African-American president.'

Allen West

#2. Cooper was my road roommate, and also happened to be the first African American player drafted by a National Basketball Association team.

Bob Cousy

#3. My mom was the first African-American woman to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School, in 1946. She had leadership roles in the law, in government and the corporate world. She was a great role model in that she felt anything was possible.

John W. Rogers Jr.

#4. I think Donald Trump is totally unfit to be president of the United States. Let's not forget, this guy was one of the leaders of the so-called birther movement, which was an effort to delegitimize the presidency of the first African-American president we have ever had.

Bernie Sanders

#5. Obama's a great speaker. Because of his speaking ability and his appearance, a lot of guys got on board. Being the first African American, a lot guys got on board.

Pete Rose

#6. The first African-American leader was Dr. Martin Luther King.

Bobby Seale

#7. While we dance in the streets and pat ourselves on the back for being a nation great enough to reach beyond racial divides to elect our first African-American president, let us not forget that we remain a nation still proudly practicing prejudice.

Harvey Fierstein

#8. America is ready to elect its first African American President, especially one with light-skin and and no Negro dialect.

Mitch McConnell

#9. Barack Obama happens to be the first African-American, and so criticism of him is and always was gonna be racism, and therefore not permitted.

Rush Limbaugh

#10. I did want to mark the fact that it was the first African-American to win the Lead Actress category.I thought it was so progressive.

Viola Davis

#11. I was the first African-American woman to play Maggie in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' It was at the Virginia State Theatre, and we turned Richmond upside down.

Tamara Tunie

#12. Beyond [Barack Obama] having made history as the first African-American president, I hope that he gets re-elected for what he does while in office, not for his skin color. I certainly believe he has the capacity.

Lenny Kravitz

#13. Introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard

Barack Obama

#14. Everyone says we have our first African American president. Has there ever been a Jewish president? An Italian president? They don't say a damn thing about that. You think we're still fighting the Civil War or something. If you want to mention it in passing, OK. But don't dwell on it.

Monte Irvin

#15. There are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country. It's fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have. Obama's father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

#16. I am the first African-American chairman of any major conservation organization in history. That's a big step.

Jerome Ringo

#17. I'm also working on another independent film called Roxanne, Roxanne, about Roxanne Shante, who was one of the first African American battle rappers from Brooklyn. It is produced by Forest Whitaker and Pharrell [williams], so I'm really in great hands.

Nia Long

#18. The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. Women in this country must become revolutionaries." - Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress

Jessica Bennett

#19. When I was growing up, Brandy was TV star, reality star, a pop star, a Cover girl, Grammy winner, had her own Brandy doll, and was the first African American to play Disney princess Cinderella. Most importantly, she is a survivor. Many only judge and remember a person's most recent failure.

Niecy Nash

#20. I think that there are some people on the so-called Left who might say we have to circle our wagons around the first African American president, and to me that is racism in reverse because his policies are actually still the racist policies of empire.

Cindy Sheehan

#21. I'm excited about my own network, BounceTV. It's the first African-American-owned broadcast network. It's myself, my partner Rob Hardy, and some other African-American businessmen, including Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III.

Will Packer

#22. Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is 'not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.' That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first African-American in the White House.

Jesse Jackson

#23. Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.

Bobby McFerrin

#24. I can never do justice to the great feeling of amazement and encouragement I felt when, perhaps for the first time in American history, white citizens of a Southern state banded together to come to Selma and show their indignation about the injustices against the African-Americans.

Amelia Boynton Robinson

#25. An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write.

William Labov

#26. I remember reading article about the woman in that Oakland neighborhood who lost all her children to violence. I wondered why'd she keep living there after the first one was killed. Didn't she care about the others?
Today, I zoomed out and wondered why I'm still in America.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#27. First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look - no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

Henry Louis Gates

#28. There's good reason to be excited. You have the first woman running who is qualified, and a very attractive African-American who has demonstrated crossover appeal. I got involved in politics 40 years ago during the civil rights movement, so yes, it's an exciting thing.

Joe Biden

#29. I loved going to the library. It was the first time I ever saw Black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I'll never forget my librarian.

John Lewis

#30. 'The Firebird' just symbolizes a lot for me and my career. It was one of the first really big principal roles that I was ever given an opportunity to dance with American Ballet Theatre, and it was a huge step for the African-American community, I think, within the classical ballet world.

Misty Copeland

#31. Out of 30 years of Second City I was probably the third African-American with the main stage cast. I was surprised when I first heard that. I think part of the reason that improvisation has never been popular with African-Americans is that it isn't popular in the inner cities.

Tim Meadows

#32. When I was born, I was colored. I soon became a Negro. Not long after that I was black. Most recently I was African-American. It seems we're on a roll here. But I am still first and foremost in search of freedom.

Harry Belafonte

#33. America was magnificently characterized in November of 2008 when we elected, for the first time, an African-American President of the United States.

David Scott

#34. I'm the whitest guy you will ever meet. The first time I saw an African-American, my dad had to tell me to stop staring.

Glenn Beck

#35. To understand how Republicans lost the African American vote, we must first understand how we won the African American vote.

Rand Paul

#36. The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival.

Bernice Johnson Reagon

#37. Nowadays, people always say, how come he's doing such young shows? But they never mention The Mod Squad. I was very proud of that show. It's the first time an African-American guy kissed a white girl.

Aaron Spelling

#38. I am suspicious - first of all, in myself - of adopted mysticisms of glib spirituality, above all of white people's tendency to ... vampirize American Indian, or African, or Asian, or other 'exotic' ways of understanding.

Adrienne Rich

#39. (On Barack Obama) I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man.

Joe Biden

#40. I'd been listening to African-American music since the first record I ever bought, which was by Sam Cooke. And it sounds more like my private thoughts that I never thought I would be able to articulate - I never thought I would be able to express publicly.

David Toop

#41. Sen. Joe Biden, on the day of announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, called Barack Obama the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright, and ... clean. I think we've seen the shortest presidential campaign in history.

Jay Leno

#42. Don't you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn't stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included.

Bernice L. McFadden

#43. My first novel, 'Leaving Atlanta,' took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.

Tayari Jones