I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings quotes about race & the color line

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or the empty pots made less tragic by your tales?

It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

I was no longer simply a member of the proud graduating class of 1940; I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.

During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love.

we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets (include preachers, musicians and blues singers).

Champion of the world. A Black boy. Some Black mother's son. He was the strongest man in the world.

Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.

If you ask a Negro where he's been, he'll tell you where he's going.

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being “called out of his name.”