29 Days of Wisdom for Black History Month 2024
Below you will find one piece of wisdom for you to reflect on each day in February from a notable person of African descent. This collection of quotes features historical and contemporary figures that I collected in my commonplace book in the last two years. They have inspired me, I hope they do the same for you. Happy Black History Month!
This is the fifth annual list. You can read the first four here:
February 1, 2024: “It’s the duty of every man and woman who has achieved some success in life to pass it on, because when we’re gone, what matters most isn’t what we were able to attain but who we were able to help.” -Mateo Askaripour, Black Buck (2021)
February 2, 2024: “When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.” -Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray
February 3, 2024: “Know that you can take the scraps of life and make masterpieces.” -Alora Young, “When You Are Old Enough to Make Gumbo”, Walking Gentry Home: A Memoir of My Foremothers in Verse (2022)
February 4, 2024: “Sometimes we can be so religious that we miss an opportunity to have a real relationship with God. We also can be so religious that we miss the opportunity to love and respect each other.” -Tabitha Brown, March 1, 2023 Tweet
February 5, 2024: “When I discover where I am, I will be free… When I discover who I am, I will be free.” -Letticia Cosbert Miller, Swimming Up a Dark Tunnel (2022)
February 6, 2024: “True freedom is always bought with a price of great sacrifice and justified only through an ointment of redemption” -Regina YC Garcia, “Hallowed Grounds: Sacred Sites of African American Memory”, The Firetalker’s Daughter (2023)
February 7, 2024: “You keep going. You just don’t stop. No matter, if there’s one slap to the face, turn the other cheek. And the hurt you’re feeling? You can’t think about what’s being done to you now, or what has been done to you in the past. You just have to keep going.” -Tina Turner, My Love Story (2018)
February 8, 2024: “hope is like a stubborn ship gripping on a dock, a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer or knock down a dream.” -Amanda Gorman, “In This Place (An American Lyric)”, 100 Poems That Matter by The Academy of American Poets (2022)
February 9, 2024: “I want to tell Eileen that our propensity to always sing and dance shouldn’t deceive her into thinking we’re a happy people. Because we’re not. We’re a people of masks. Singing and dancing and laughing are our attempts to force forgetfulness on ourselves. To ignore the Horror. To own the happiness we can never afford. And, sometimes, it works.” -Stephen Buoro, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa (2023)
February 10, 2024: “Each blow for freedom struck is freedom’s gain.” -Fenton Johnson, “Ethiopia”, Visions of the Dusk (1915)
February 11, 2024: “Nature causes you to pause, to wonder, and to see connection. Pause, wonder, and connection. When you’re in the city, you get caught up by the forest of stuff that humanity is made, but when you are by the river, when your tree is planted by the river, you get a chance to see the connection.” -Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, Pass the Mic podcast May 9, 2023
February 12, 2024: “Just because something is difficult to accept doesn’t mean you should refuse to accept it. Just because someone tells you a story doesn’t make that story true.” -Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (2021)
February 13, 2024: “A lot of information you hear today is going to make you feel very, very uncomfortable. That’s okay. That’s what learning and development is as a human being, being uncomfortable.” -Damaras Obi in How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith (2021)
February 14, 2024: “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” -James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (1961)
February 15, 2024: “The ability to say No to yourself is a gift. If you can resist your urges, change your habits, and say Yes to only what you deem truly meaningful, you’ll be practicing healthy self-boundaries. It’s your responsibility to care for yourself without excuses.” -Nedra Glover Tawwab, Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself (2021)
February 16, 2024: “Courage: Be willing to fail. Be willing to be embarrassed.” -George Raveling, August 18, 2023 Tweet
February 17, 2024: “When I love something, I give it my all.” -Reggie Bailey, IG Live on Sept 28, 2023
February 18, 2024: “Regret is the most useless emotion in the world.” -Zora Neale Hurston, Letter to Everett Hurston, Jr. (Oct 12, 1951)
February 19, 2024: “We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary, bone by bone.” -Alice Walker, “Foreword: Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View”, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography by Robert E. Hemenway (1977)
February 20, 2024: “As I reflect on my journey, I would offer this advice to others: always have faith in yourself and your unique vision, even when circumstances require a pivot; never relinquish your dreams, as they can evolve and adapt; and remember that no one succeeds in isolation — cultivate connections and lean on others for support, for it is through our shared efforts that we truly thrive and make a lasting impact.” -Emely Rumble, “Meet Emely Rumble” in Bold Journey 9/26/23
February 21, 2024: “America has a way of dancing with its own delusion. Unable to keep count of its murders because it, then, would have to keep count of its murderers, its good neighbors.” -Jasmine Mans, “Greenwood”, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story created by Nikole Hannah-Jones (2021)
February 22, 2024: “Change is ongoing. Everything changes in some way- size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking, whatever. Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way. I don’t claim that everything changes in every way, but everything changes in some way.” -Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)
February 23, 2024: “If you want to know a place, you talk to its history.” -Percival Everett, The Trees (2021)
February 24, 2024: “Bury me in between the lines with my ancestors who documented their struggles because even they knew that their minds and stories could never be held in complete bondage.” -Jerid Woods aka Akili, 3 Pens of CapitoLEAN by Doc & Akili (2022)
February 25, 2024: “You can’t build a future if you don’t dream it.” -Janelle Monáe & Sheree Renée Thomas, The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe (2022)
February 26, 2024: “Conversation is the ceremony of companionship” -Ethel Waters, Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston (1942)
February 27, 2024: “…Any monument is in a sense both an icon and a grave- a burial vault, in which the messiness of history is often dispensed with for the sake of the imagined community. And that should always concern us.” -Imani Perry, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (2022)
February 28, 2024: “I believe the essential thing is to recognize the possibilities of the Divine, to be more and more awed by this life- more kind, more loving of the world and its inhabitants. What does belief mean if it doesn’t transform you, if it doesn’t make you behave with more reverence for everything?” -Tim Seibles, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions that Grew Me Up by Remica Bingham-Risher (2022)
February 29, 2024: “…even when we’re in a place we might not have pictured, we can find some gifts to impart, some kindness to ourselves and others.” -Remica Bingham-Risher, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions that Grew Me Up (2022)
