Harlem Rhapsody Quotes

“We laugh, but the merriment stops when Will says, “Blackface is not gone! If the words are written by a white man, then it doesn’t matter if it’s a colored man on that stage or a white man in blackface. The words are still written by men who’ve never lived a moment without privilege, telling stories of men who cannot even purchase access to privilege.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“White folks still have us bound. The chains that shackled us were beyond physical.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“I’m so grateful to her for encouraging me to read. The characters inside books became my friends. I loved every story, even the tragic ones. Because even in tragedy, the words can make a pitiable life beyond beautiful.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“Will glances around the table. “I think everyone knows I withdrew from the Socialist Party to support Wilson, and it was with the vote of colored men who followed me that he won.” There is a sigh in his tone when he continues, “But his betrayal…he says he isn’t a racist, but he awakened every racist in this country. Supporting him was the greatest political mistake I’ve made.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“You’re a colored woman who lacks any of the advantages this country treasures. You are neither white nor a man, and so you’ll be judged harshly and unfairly, even as you perform well. However, you will be judged doubly, and the consequences will be severe if you falter.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“Another time, a different place. Je t'aime pour toujours.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“Who is the author of such brilliance? First, I notice the title: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Then, the name of the poet: Langston”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“This is the gift of Harlem—the dress, the music, the language. It isn’t possible to live here and not begin to breathe and bleed this place.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“She sometimes uses the city’s slang, just the other day telling me she plans to catch “the first thing smoking” home to Philadelphia next week.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“I began to see him not as dead, but free. Free from a world that considered his skin a problem, that would see his ambition as impudence and would view him always with suspicion at best, but more likely with enmity. I understood I had to create a world where colored boys didn’t have to die to be free.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“I’ve never had a single violent thought toward anyone. Not until this moment.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“Then others, like Mary McLeod Bethune, the educator who, twenty years ago, started a school for girls that continues to thrive.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“The magazine’s mission is to show Negro children that being colored is beautiful. Inside the pages, children will meet accomplished men and”—I pause and emphasize—“women who have achieved major feats.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“God has great plans for you. But He cannot give you greater than what you desire for yourself.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“The world is changing for women. We’re doing more, working like men, and by this time next year, we’ll even have the right to vote.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“I think now of how this book had been the bridge connecting my father and W. E. B. Du Bois. From the moment of our first correspondence, Will stepped into those spaces left empty by my father’s death.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“The Souls of Black Folk had transformed my understanding of how I was affected by the prejudice that pulsed through this country. And that prejudice had created a color line behind which every Negro lived, with a consciousness of our race that we never had the privilege to ignore.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“But as a twenty-year-old, I understood the profoundness of my loss. Who would believe in me now?”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“The Souls of Black Folk had transformed my understanding of how I was affected by the prejudice that pulsed through this country. And that prejudice had created a color line behind which every Negro lived, with a consciousness of our race that we never had the privilege to ignore.

Race determined when we could speak, what we would say, where we could live, how we were educated -- race was the burden every Negro bore, and that verity left us with a double consciousness that we had to chart through every minute of each day.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“The talented tenth. A perpetual thought and constant consideration of W.EB. DuBois. A notion that Will first conceptualized in 1903, in an essay that sent Negroes throughout the country into a fervor.

Will had declared that the betterment of the Negro race rested upon colored men earning college degrees, rather than the vocational and industrial training that others, like Booker T. Washington, espoused. Then, the best of the best -- ten percent -- would set aside their own aspirations and become race leaders, examples for the ninety percent to follow.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“Will's voice draws me back. 'I'm excited for Miss Fauset to be with us at this propitious time, Mrs. Fauset. The war is over, the world is changing, and we not only need to be part of that change, but must also facilitate that change. This is the time for the new Negro, and literature must play its role. At its best, literature is a useful form of propaganda.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“His bondage came in a bottle”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“The greed of the powerful will lead to the addiction of the weak”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody

“You're a colored woman who lacks any of the advantages this country treasures. You are neither white nor a man, and so you'll be judged harshly and unfairly, even as you perform well. However, you will be judged doubly, and the consequences will be severe if you falter. Not just professionally. you'll be judged by the company you keep.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody