"The colored man is in the South to stay there. He will not leave it voluntarily and he cannot be driven out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out"
About this Quote
The subtext is confrontation dressed as realism. Fortune refuses the sentimental framing that casts Black Southerners as wards or guests. “He had no voice in being carried into the South” compresses slavery’s violence into a single image of forced transport, a reminder that Black presence is not an accident but a crime’s afterlife. Then he flips the grammar of power: if there was no consent in the original displacement, there will be “a very loud voice” in any new one. Loud is doing double duty - a warning about resistance and a demand for political agency in a region built on Black labor and Black silence.
Context matters: Fortune, a prominent Black journalist and civil-rights organizer in the post-Reconstruction era, is writing against the rising architecture of Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, and racial terror. The intent isn’t to soothe; it’s to foreclose a dangerous idea - that the South can cleanse itself by expulsion - and to insist that any future settlement must reckon with Black permanence, and therefore Black rights.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Fortune, Timothy Thomas. (2026, January 15). The colored man is in the South to stay there. He will not leave it voluntarily and he cannot be driven out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-colored-man-is-in-the-south-to-stay-there-he-160074/
Chicago Style
Fortune, Timothy Thomas. "The colored man is in the South to stay there. He will not leave it voluntarily and he cannot be driven out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-colored-man-is-in-the-south-to-stay-there-he-160074/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The colored man is in the South to stay there. He will not leave it voluntarily and he cannot be driven out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-colored-man-is-in-the-south-to-stay-there-he-160074/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.
