The Metuchen Downtown Alliance and the Metuchen Human Relations Commission are proud to celebrate Black History Month. We hope you join us as you shop and dine in Downtown Metuchen to learn the stories and enjoy the sentiments from a few prominent Black figures from around the globe; select posters will be displayed in store windows around Downtown Metuchen. We encourage you to learn about and share your own stories as we celebrate Black History – past, present and its future.
If you’re always trying to be normal you’ll never know how amazing you can be.
– Maya Angelou, American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
– James Baldwin, American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist.
If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring in a folding chair.
– Shirley Chisholm, American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress.
I’d like my grandchildren to be able to see that their grandmother stood up for something, a long time ago.
– Claudette Colvin, Retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus.
It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals.
– Dr. Angela Davis, American political activist, academic and author.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
– Frederick Douglass, American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.
My saying is: We win and lose together. I think that really does apply to both my family, fans and the team.
– Sir Lewis Hamilton, British racing driver. In Formula One, Hamilton has won a joint-record seven World Drivers’ Championship titles (tied with Michael Schumacher), while he holds the outright records for the most wins (95), pole positions (98) and podium finishes (165), amongst others.
Don’t call it a comeback. I’ve been here for years.
– LL Cool J, American rapper, record producer and actor.
Some of the most fun people I know are scientists.
– Dr. Mae Jemison, is an American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. She became the first black woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Math. It’s just there. You’re either right or wrong, that’s what I like about it.
– Katherine Johnson, American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.
I believe in the impossible because no one else does.
– Florence Griffith Joyner, American track and field athlete. Flo Jo is the fastest woman of all time; the world records she set in 1988 for both the 100m and 200m still stand.
Power is not given to you. You have to take it.
– Beyonce Knowles, American singer, songwriter and record producer
The subsistence level is only a conventional idea, and conventions change.
– Sir William Arthur Lewis, Saint Lucian economist and the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University. In 1979 he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
I’ll always have enough love for all of you.
– Doc McStuffins, Beloved Disney children’s character known for her kindness and medical skills to her toys and reminding us that representation matters, at all ages.
Vote because you can.
– Thomas Mundy Peterson, Born in Metuchen, Mr. Peterson was the first Black American to vote in an election under the just-enacted provisions of the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution. His vote was cast on March 31, 1870.
A life is not important other than the impact it has on other lives.
– Jackie Robinson, American professional baseball player who became the first Black American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15,1947
No time to marry, no time to settle down; I’m a young woman, and I ain’t done runnin’ around.
– Bessie Smith, American Blues singer known as the “Empress of the Blues.”
Truth is powerful and it prevails.
– Sojourner Truth, American abolitionist and women’s rights activist.
