African Americans

Famous quotes containing the words african and/or americans:

    A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,—a denizen of the woods. “The pale white man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.
    Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)