1126 – Life Lesson from Herman Munster

“The lesson I want you to learn is it doesn’t matter what you look like. You can be tall or short or fat or thin or ugly or handsome, like your father, or you can be black or yellow or white – it doesn’t matter – what does matter is the size of your heart and the strength of your character.”

-Herman Munster (Played by Fred Gwynne) in The Munsters

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1070 – “White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded.”

-James Baldwin

1065 – I, Too by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

994 – “Let us labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion.”

-Ulysses S Grant, 18th President of the United States of America

978 – “While skin color is more important than the brightness of the eyes, there will always be war.”

-Bob Marley [Attributed]

905 – “By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free. My Nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.”

-George W Bush, 43rd President of the United States of America

841 – “Well, when I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house. ‘Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”

–Whoopi Goldberg

729 – “Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr


Today is Martin Luther King, Jr Day in the United States. This January 15th marked King’s 90th birthday and this April will be the 51 years since his assassination. 

720 – “The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen. Yet he is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong, and should be corrected. To this correction I stand committed, so far as Executive influence can avail.”

–Ulysses S Grant, 18th President of the United States of America

713 – “I affirm, therefore, that our present position is one of apostasy; and to give the ballot to the Negro will be no innovation, but a return to the old paths, a restoration of that spirit of liberty to which the sufferings and sacrifices of the Revolution gave birth.”

–James A Garfield, 20th President of the United States of America