Carolina QuotesA stream cannot rise higher than its source. The atmosphere of homes is no rarer and purer and sweeter than are the mothers in those homes. A race is but a total of families. The nation is the aggregate of its homes.
Anna J. Cooper
Carolinian
Source
A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (Xenia, Ohio: Aldine, 1892); Documenting the American South, UNC
- form
- book
- work
- A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South
- year
- 1892
Cite this record
“A stream cannot rise higher than its source. The atmosphere …” Anna J. Cooper. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-CC3A3FEA31. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/cc3a3fea31
More from Anna J. Cooper
When colored persons have been employed it was too often as machines or as manikins. There has been no disposition, generally, to get the black man's ideal or to let his individuality work by its own gravity.
Let us then, here and now, recognize this force and resolve to make the most of it--not the boys less, but the girls more.
"I am my Sister's keeper!" should be the hearty response of every man and woman of the race, and this conviction should purify and exalt the narrow, selfish and petty personal aims of life into a noble and sacred purpose.