Growing up in Orangeburg, I didn't know that I lived in the 'corridor of shame.' I was the son of a single mom who learned to read from comic books. My grandparents helped raise me.
Every February, we reflect on and honor the achievements, struggles, and icons that comprise Black history. As a proud, Black man running for office and raising two young, Black boys in the South, I am acutely aware that I stand on the shoulders of giants.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of honoring the contributions of Black figures in history while acknowledging personal responsibility as a leader and role model.
In this quote, Jaime Harrison reflects on the significance of Black history, touching upon the challenges and triumphs that have shaped the community. He conveys a deep sense of pride in his heritage, recognizing that his own achievements are built upon the legacy of influential Black leaders and icons. This acknowledgment extends to his role as a father, where he strives to instill the same pride and awareness of their history in his sons, ensuring they understand their roots and the giants whose efforts have paved the way for their future.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during Black History Month celebrations to inspire discussions about heritage.
More from Jaime Harrison
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I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.
It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.
In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.
All these mountains of Irish dead, all these corpses mangled beyond recognition, all these arms, legs, eyes, ears, fingers, toes, hands, all these shivering putrefying bodies and portions of bodies once warm living and tender parts of Irish men and youths - all these horrors in Flanders or the Gallipoli Peninsula, are all items in the price Ireland pays for being part of the British Empire.
We know from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians' ears. Instead, the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants' killing most Indians by war, murder, and introduced diseases, and the surviving Indians' being pressured into adopting English, the new majority language.