It's alright to live in Europe drawing and painting for personal satisfaction while turning out illustrations and cartoons for European publications … - Ollie Harrington

My first real job was as art editor of the People's Voice. Adam [Clayton] Powell, Charlie Buchanan and Ben Davis published that great sheet and one day Adam called me into his office. "Ollie," he said, "there's someone I want you to meet." A beaming giant of a man left his chair, thumped me on the back with a hand as powerful as John Henry's sledgehammer and boomed, "Feller, I just wanted you to know that those cartoons of yours are great." Of course it was Paul Robeson. I can't remember doing much more than gulping. What can one say to a mountain? But it was the beginning of a treasured friendship. ("Our Beloved Pauli," 1971)

Black Renaissance can come only from Black people, by Black people, of Black people, and for Black people.

Traveling through the betrayed American cities last autumn I became aware of a profound trembling of the earth in every ghetto. Young Black people with amazingly straight backs, knowing, or better still, convinced that Black IS beautiful too are now enabled to release the blindingly creative energies which have always been bound in chains by a criminally bigoted system. A revolution is taking place in the ghettos if one has the eyes to look behind the frightening facade. And revolutions require expression. Black kids painting huge murals on discouragingly neglected slum buildings are expressing that revolution. Sidestreet theatres, poetry readings, and neighborhood museums are part of that expression. They're all expressing ideas with which Black people can identify. A Black Renaissance has already been born.