Negro Improvement Association

Famous quotes containing the words negro, improvement and/or association:

    “Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
    Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
    I heard a Negro play.

    Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
    By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light”
    —Langston Hughes (1902–1967)

    “We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.”
    —Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)

    “They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.”
    —Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)