The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974 TV Movie)

Thalmus Rasulala: Ned - Age 42

Photos 

Quotes 

• Ned - Age 42 : I want my children to be Black and proud of it.

• Ned - Age 42 : This land, America, belongs to us all. I don't mean that we own it, but that it's God's. And that makes it as much ours as any man's. You are not bested by no man. Be Americans, but first, be men.

• Ned - Age 42 : You got some black men who will tell you that the white man's the worst thing on the earth. But let me tell you this: all men are the same. The same evil you see in whites you see in blacks, and likewise the good to be found is in all men, white and black. The enemy is not skin. It's ignorance. It was ignorance that put us here in the first place. Ignorance because the big tribes of Africa warred against each other, or made slaves out of the smaller tribes. Our own black people put us in pens like hogs, destroying entire civilizations with rum and beads. And it was still the African, this time the Arabs, who sold us on the block. The white man didn't need guns, because we were weak. The French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, they took us because we were ignorant. We were apart from one another. You got folks here sayin', Let's go back to Africa. Let's go to Liberia. Well, I am not African. I'm American. A black American, and proud of it.

• Ned - Age 42 : Do you know what a nigger is? First, a nigger feels below anything else on this earth. He doesn't care about himself. He doesn't care about anybody else. He doesn't care about anything. Now, he'll never be an American, and he'll never be a citizen of any other nation. But there's a big difference between a black American - and a nigger. A black American cares, and he knows, and he struggles. That's why I'm telling you this. That's why I know that no son or daughter of mine will ever be a nigger.