Ossie Quotes

“Grandma didn't know she was strong. She just knew she had to do what she had to do, so she did it and found out it could be done. Grandpa didn't know he was weak. He just thought he couldn't do what he had to do, so what was the use of trying? Besides, Grandma always saw to it that, somehow, the family survived. Lots of black people fall back on the comforting thought that the Lord will provide. To a black man, I suspect that the Lord is a black woman.”
― Ossie Guffy, Ossie: The autobiography of a Black woman

“My grandma said it was wrong to be dirty, but my mama said it was beautiful to be clean.”
― Ossie Guffy, Ossie: The autobiography of a Black woman

“I guess you can't say what it's like to be born black, because when you're born--and for a long time after--you don't know you are black. When you look ina mirror, you see a little girl with dark skin, but it doesn't mean anything special to you, because when you're little you haven't learned yet that the color of your skin is going to be the most important fact of your life, the prison that locks you out instead of in, the package around your soul that sets up an immediate reaction in the white world and makes you forever an inferior, unless proven otherwise.”
― Ossie Guffy, Ossie: The autobiography of a Black woman