I Wish The Rent Was

We Younger Negro Artists Who Create Now Intend To Express Our Individual Dark-skinned Selves Without Fear Or Shame. If White People Are Pleased, We Are Glad. If They Are Not, It Doesn't Matter. We Know We Are Beautiful. And Ugly Too. The Tom-tom Cries And The Tom-tom Laughs. If Colored People Are Pleased, We Are Glad. If They Are Not, It Doesn't Matter Either. We Build Our Temples For Tomorrow, Strong As We Know How, And We Stand On Top Of The Mountain, Free Within Ourselves.

Anyday, One Can Walk Down The Street In A Big City And See A Thousand People. Any Photographer Can Photograph These People - But Very Few Photographers Can Make Their Prints Not Only Reproductions Of The People Taken, But A Comment Upon Them - Or More, A Comment Upon Their Lives - Or More Still, A Comment Upon The Social Order That Creates These Lives.

They [the Police] Learned Something From Them Harlem Riots. They Used To Beat Your Head Right In Public, But Now They Only Beat It After They Get You Down To The Station House.

Negro Blood Is Sure Powerful, Because Just One Drop Of Black Blood Makes A Colored Man. One Drop--you Are A Negro! . . . Black Is Powerful.

I Stay Cool, And Dig All Jive, That's The Way I Stay Alive. My Motto, As I Live And Learn, Is Dig And Be Dug In Return.