June Jordan Quotes - Page 3

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Children Choices Country Democracy Enemies Fathers Fighting

To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify.

June Jordan

Children, Differences, Forever

1978 Keynote address for Child Welfare League of America. Collected as 'Old Stories: New Lives' in Moving Towards Home (1989).

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As I am a poet I express what I believe, and I fight against whatever I oppose, in poetry.

June Jordan

Believe, Fighting, I Believe

"Personal Quote/ Did you know?". www.imdb.com.

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In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience.

June Jordan

Thinking, America, Issues

June Jordan (1986). “On call: political essays”

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When that devil's bullet lodged itself inside the body of Martin Luther King, he had already begun an astonishing mobilization of poor, Black, white, latino Americans who had nothing to lose. They would challenge our government to eliminate exploitative, merciless, and war-mongering policies, nationwide, or else "tie up the country" through "means of civil disobedience." Dr. King intended to organize those legions into "coercive direct actions" that would make of Babylon a dysfunctional behemoth begging for relief. Is it any wonder he was killed?

June Jordan

Country, Kings, War

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So, poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown, but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.

June Jordan

Mean, People, Leader

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We need everybody and all that we are. We need to know and make known the complete, constantly unfolding, complicated heritage that is our black experience. We should absolutely resist the superstar, one at a time mentality that threatens the varied and resilient, flexible wealth of our Black future.

June Jordan

Black, Needs, Heritage

June Jordan (1981). “Civil Wars”, p.86, Simon and Schuster

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Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?

June Jordan

Mean, Men, Want

June Jordan (2009). “Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays”, p.94, Basic Books

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The courts cannot garnish a fathers salary, nor freeze his account, nor seize his property on behalf of his children, in our society. Apparently this is because a kid is not a car or a couch or a boat.

June Jordan

Children, Father, Kids

June Jordan (2009). “Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays”, p.159, Basic Books

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... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchings for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other.

June Jordan

Determination, Blood, Self

June Jordan (1985). “On call: political essays”, South End Pr

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There is a man who exists as one of the most popular objects of leadership, legislation, and quasi-literature in the history of all men. . . . This man, that object of attention, attack, and vast activity, cannot make himself be heard, let alone understood. He has never been listened to. . . . That man is Black and alive in white America where the media of communication do not allow the delivery of his own voice, his own desires, his own rage.

June Jordan

Communication, Men, Media

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In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.

June Jordan

Children, Motherhood, Names

June Jordan (2003). “Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays”, p.277, Basic Books

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The neglected legacy of the Sixties is just this: unabashed moral certitude, and the purity -- the incredibly outgoing energy -- of righteous rage.

June Jordan

Energy, Legacy, Moral

June Jordan (1992). “Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union”, Pantheon

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The United States Supreme Court, once a reliable if ultimate recourse for progressive and even revolutionary grievances, has become a retrograde wellspring for enormous economic and social distress.

June Jordan

Law, Justice, United States

June Jordan (1992). “Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union”, Pantheon

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All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it's your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.

June Jordan

History, African American, Soul

June Jordan (1981). “Civil Wars”, Beacon Pr

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Behold the heart and mind of Angela Davis: open, relentless, and on time! She is as radiant, she is as true, as that invincible sunrise she means means means to advance With all of the faith and all of the grace of her entirely devoted life.

June Jordan

Heart, Mean, Grace

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If we lived in a democratic state our language would have to hurtle, fly, curse, and sing, in all the common American names, all the undeniable and representative and participating voices of everybody here.

June Jordan

Names, Voice, Diversity

June Jordan (2009). “Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays”, p.154, Basic Books

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As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language.

June Jordan

Hate, Requirements, Language

June Jordan (1981). “Civil Wars”, p.68, Simon and Schuster

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Sometimes we become so sophisticated we have to read the New York Times in order to figure out whether it's a hot or a rainy day.

June Jordan

New York, Rainy Day, Order

June Jordan (1992). “Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union”, Pantheon

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It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me.

June Jordan

Education, Mean, World

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I am working never to be late again.

June Jordan

Late

June Jordan (2009). “Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays”, p.164, Basic Books

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What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart?

June Jordan

Heart, Sexuality, Tyranny

June Jordan (2009). “Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays”, p.92, Basic Books

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Reproductive choice is not some trendy item to toss or keep around the house. If you cannot get an education or a job, if you cannot choose what will or will not happen with your own body, then what freedom do you have?

June Jordan

Jobs, Choices, House

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The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet

June Jordan

Writing, Important, Language

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Lately... Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie. In our history, the state has failed to respond to the weak. You could be white, male, Presbyterian and heterosexual besides, but if you get fired or if you get sick tomorrow, you might as well be Black, for all the state will want to hear from you.

June Jordan

White, Pie, America

June Jordan (1985). “On call: political essays”, South End Pr

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If any of us hopes to survive, she must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.

June Jordan

Women, Political, Majority

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Born: July 9, 1936
Died: June 14, 2002
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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