Luiz Gama Quotes

Correio Paulistano, January 29, 1867. Source: Defendeu escravizados: O inestimável legado do jornalista Luiz Gama.

If someday (...) the respectable judges of Brazil, forgetful of the respect they owe the law, and of the indispensable duties they have contracted before morality and the nation, corrupted by venality or the deleterious action of power, abandoning the sacrosanct cause of law (...) failing in due justice to the unfortunate ones who suffer unjust slavery, I, on my own account, (...) and under my sole responsibility, will advise and promote, not insurrection, which is a crime, but "resistance", which is a civic virtue.

The slave who kills his master, in any circumstance, always does so in self-defense.

Correio Paulistano, November 10, 1871. Source: Defendeu escravizados: O inestimável legado do jornalista Luiz Gama.

A law is a social monument, a page of history, a lesson in ethnography, a reason for state.

Slavery is a kind of social leprosy: it has often been abolished by legislators and restored by education under various aspects.

Subtitle of the article "Aos escravocratas" written by Raul Pompeia. Newspaper "ÇA IRA", August 19, 1882. Source: Benedito, Mouzar (2011). Luiz Gama - o libertador de escravos e sua mãe libertária, Luíza Mahin 2 ed. São Paulo: Expressão Popular. Page: 59. ISBN 85-7743-004-9.

Under the law, the crime of murder perpetrated by the slave on the person of the master is justifiable

In front of them Washington, pensive like Archimedes, with the tip of the sacred sword, soaked in the blood of battles, inscribes the United States on the map of the Nations; and Franklin, the modern Teramenes, snatching a ray from the sun, with lucid stars, engraves in infinity the eternal legend of Liberty.

A Província de São Paulo, Carta a Ferreira de Menezes, December 18, 1880. Source: Leia artigo de Luiz Gama publicado há mais de 140 anos nas páginas do Estadão.

I am not a legal scholar, I am not a doctor, I am not a law graduate, I have no pretensions to celebrity, nor am I in the position to occupy a position in the judiciary; I am, however, disgusted by the notorious incongruity of which, with undauntled arrogance, eminent magistrates who have as their office the study of laws, and as their obligation the just application of them.

Luiz Gama is the only intellectual, the only black Brazilian personality of the 19th century to have lived the experience of slavery. This is already a fact that makes him unique in the panorama of Brazil in the 19th century".

Gazeta da Tarde, [Carta a Ferreira de Menezes], January 07, 1881. Source: Defendeu escravizados: O inestimável legado do jornalista Luiz Gama.

Historian Lígia Fonseca Ferreira. Source: Os desafios de Luiz Gama na luta dos negros por justiça.

À Forca o Cristo da Multidão, 1882. Source: Luiz Gama desenha o perfil de Tiradentes.