No Crystal Stair Quotes

“Everybody keeps saying be satisfied with Jesus's love, and he will give us our daily bread. I keep waiting, but we never get any bread, so I have to go out and do things for myself.”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair

“I believe in God, and I love my brother. But I don't want any religion that will demand I lose my individuality.”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair

“Until the neglected and the rejected are accepted and respected, there's gonna be no damn peace . . . nowhere! Only a tree will stand still while it's being chopped down.”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair

“I keep thinking about Marcus Garvey and what he says about black people knowing themselves. It's clear that if the so-called Negro goes to school, he earns a degree for knowing the white man, but not for knowing himself. All he learns about himself is slavery. Slavery is not a history of a man; it's a misfortune of a race of people. The black man needs to know the dignity of our race. The only way he will get this knowledge is to take it for himself.”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair

“A person has to have confidence in what he's going to do. If he don't, he's not going to do it long. He has to have confidence first in his idea and next in himself.
Two men have different ideas and they go to work on them. Now the first fella's idea may come up soon. Your may linger a long, long time, but any idea, if it's well done, will come up in its own time.
You can plant five seeds at the same moment - tomato, potato, cabbage, lettuce, beets - place them at the same moment. ANd they all don't come up at the same time. If the beet would get discouraged because the cabbage come up in front of him, then there wouldn't be no beets. And if the cabbage would get discouraged because the tomato come up before his program, then there wouldn't be no cabbage.
Now the evidence of a test that's gonna come in your time of doing is the sacrifice. Hungry - that's in the making of the program. Broke - that's in the making of the program. All these things will discourage you. But you can't let them discourage you.
I believed that I would do a thing, and I went to work doin' it.
-Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair

“My father said to me when I was a child, 'Boy, set there until I come back.' That was his law and I had to obey him. He went off somewhere and forgot about me. I sat there all day waiting for my father and almost got a stroke from the sun.

I said to my son one time, 'Boy, set there until I come back.' You know what he said to me? 'For what?'

You're not going to cram down the throats of today's youth what got crammed down my father's. Young people want to know the facts now.”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair

“Religion can be a good thing. Churches did black folks good after Reconstruction. It was the only place people like Nat Turner and Douglass could hold meetings to unite our people. But the white man wanted to teach black folks about the by and by in the sky. He wanted to take their minds off the things here, so maybe they wouldn't notice who was kicking them in the head. I admit, since joining my brother, I've changed some of my views. But you have to be smart about religion. You have to look closely at who's claiming it and how they're using it.”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair

“You can't walk straight on a crooked line. You try you'll break your leg. How can you walk straight in a crooked system?”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair