28 Days of Wisdom for Black History Month 2021
Below you will find one piece of wisdom for you to reflect on each day in the month of February from a notable person of African descent. This collection of quotes features historical and contemporary figures. These 28 individuals consist of activists, singers, athletes, politicians, thespians, ministers, scholars, and writers. These quotes have been beneficial to me, I hope they do the same for you. Happy Black History Month!
This is the second annual list. You can read the first one here:
February 1, 2021: “I have a rich and noble history, however painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents, and I’m not ashamed of that. I’m ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave.” -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
February 2, 2021: “True patriotism doesn’t mean ‘love it or leave it’. True patriotism means you love your country so much you won’t leave it alone until it lives up to its values of justice for all.” -Rev. Joseph Lowery
February 3, 2021: “To fight ignorance, you don’t fight it with replacing words. You fight ignorance with knowledge. Reading books, watching educated people speak, doing your study of history is how you fight ignorance.” -Kevin Fredericks, aka KevOnStage
February 4, 2021: “Success is not the result of making one good choice, of taking one step. Real success requires step, after step, after step, after step. It requires choice after choice, it demands life-long education and passion and commitment and persistence and hunger and patience.” -Jesmyn Ward, Navigate Your Stars
February 5, 2021: “If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” -Inayah Lamis
February 6, 2021: “While many people are fearful of what could happen if they resist, I am fearful of what could happen if I don’t resist. I am fearful of cowardice. Cowardice is the inability to amass the strength to do what is right in the face of fear.” -Dr. Ibram Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
February 7, 2021: “It’s not about the destination, its about the journey.” -Pastor Tyler Burns
February 8, 2021: “People died to give me the right to read. So am I going to dishonor their deaths by not reading? I see it in a broader context than just reading to learn or for entertainment. I feel personally that I have an obligation to honor those people’s deaths; they died so that I could have the opportunity to read.” -Coach George Raveling
February 9, 2021: “Generations of people have suffered and died so that I could be this free. And with that always in my heart, I write whatever I feel needs to be written. I work for the ancestors. Period.” -Alice Walker (Feb. 9th is Alice’s birthday)
February 10, 2021: “I shall permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” -Booker T. Washington
February 11, 2021: “Truth that is not grounded in love is just brutality.” -Pastor Lenny Duncan, Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S.
February 12, 2021: “A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.” -Amiri Baraka
February 13, 2021: “Every break with long standing tradition is both apt to be a moral victory and a risk.” -Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, from Feb. 13, 1977 sermon referencing her making history as the first Black Female to be ordained as a priest in the Episcopalian Church.
February 14, 2021: “Truth is, whenever the ones who’ve been rejected have come together down through history and stood together to lead us, justice has never lost. Now, I didn’t say justice has never been fought and justice hasn’t been beaten up. But justice has never lost.” -Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, We Are Called To Be A Movement
February 15, 2021: “We look for the negative because we don’t want to believe in our greatness.” -Amber Riley (Feb 15th is Amber’s birthday)
February 16, 2021: “See, you don’t have to think about doing the right thing. If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.” -Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
February 17, 2021: “I almost tried out for a play once,” she told Kennedy, climbing the steps. “But I chickened out.”
“Well, maybe that’s your problem,” Kennedy said. “You tell yourself no before anyone even says it to you.” -Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
February 18, 2021: “Caring for myself is not an act of self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” -Audre Lorde (Feb. 18th is Audre’s birthday)
February 19, 2021: “The only way to transcend the pain, anger, shame, and sorrow of our history is to face the situation and experience it, to allow the humanity of the ancestors and their suffering to wash through us and settle into our spirit. Only then will we be free and begin to heal.” -Ser Seshsh Ab Heter- C.M. Boxley, in The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi by Richard Grant
February 20, 2021: “Do not be discouraged if the world does not accept your offering at first. Remember-success is word and thought put into action- GO ONWARD AND UPWARD.” -Hattie McDaniel, from Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood by Jill Watts
February 21, 2021: “Anchor the eternity of love in your own soul and embed this planet with goodness. Lean towards the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. Release the need to hate, to harbor division and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don’t be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself.” -Rep. John Lewis, Across that Bridge (Feb. 21 is John Lewis’s birthday)
February 22, 2021: “We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of it members without receiving the curse in its own soul.” -Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, 1866 11th National Women’s Rights Convention (Feb. 22 is the anniversary of Harper’s death)
February 23, 2021: “If freedom was my momma’s right, and freedom was my daddy’s right too, then somehow it must be ours.” -Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer
February 24, 2021: “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth, is Change. God is Change.” -Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (Feb. 24th is the anniversary of Butler’s death)
February 25, 2021: “Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.” -Wilma Rudolph
February 26, 2021: “Hope is being able to see there is light despite all of the darkness.” -Archbishop Desmond Tutu
February 27, 2021: “For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.” -Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”
February 28, 2021: “What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.” -Lucille Clifton
