A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from September 21, 2010
“What this country needs is more unemployed politicians”

“What the country needs is more unemployed politicians” has been credited, in 1982, to artist Edward Langley (1928-1995). The quotation was credited, in 2000, to political activist and professor Angela Davis (citing an unspecified “1967” speech).
   
The earliest citations (in the 1980s-1990s) of the anti-government saying all credit Edward Langley, without giving a source.
 
     
Google Books
The 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
By Robert Byrne
New York, NY: Atheneum
1982
Pg. ?:
What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
Edward Langley
 
Google News Archive
22 August 1987, Kentucky New Era (Hopkinsville, KY), “Watching the Parade” by Joe Dorris, pg. 4A, col. 5:
What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
   
Google Books
1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said:
Many amusingly illuminated by antique etchings and line cuts

By Robert Byrne
New York, NY: Fawcett, Columbine
1988
Pg. 61:
What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
Edward Langley
 
Google Books
The Mocking of the President:
A history of campaign humor from Ike to Ronnie

By Gerald Gardner
Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press
1988
Pg. 61:
Said Edward Langley; “What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.”
 
Google Books
The Quotable Woman:
Words of wisdom from Mother Teresa, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Eleanor Roosevelt, Katharine Hepburn, and more

By Carol Turkington
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
2000
Pg. 135:
What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
—ANGELA DAVIS, Speech, 1967
 
Google Books
The Quotable Politician
By William B. Whitman
Guilford, CT: Lyons Press
2003
Pg. 26:
What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
ANGELA DAVIS, AMERICAN POLITICAL ACTIVIST AND AUTHOR (1944-)

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityGovernment/Law/Military/Religion /Health • Tuesday, September 21, 2010 • Permalink


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