John Lewis Quotes

There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one. Parks, whose act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, moved to Detroit two years later for safety reasons.

The first African-American leader was Dr. Martin Luther King.

If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.

I think, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks will go down as one of the two most well-known and remembered figures out of the Civil Rights Movement.

I marched back then - I was in a civil-rights musical, Fly Blackbird, and we met Martin Luther King.

The civil rights movement would experience many important victories, but Rosa Parks will always be remembered as its catalyst.

I don't remember when I didn't know about Martin Luther King.

Rosa Parks' entire career has been one as working as a civil rights activist.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

Mrs. Parks' act of brave defiance rocked the foundation of American society and inspired generations of civil rights leaders and created a sense of hope for every American facing legal discrimination in this country.

By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.

I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.'

When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston, there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, Malcolm X was alive; great, great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.

I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.

Selma was the turning point.

I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced.

I never knew about racial segregation until Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a revolutionary, simple and plain.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott began in December 1955, and by 1956 NAACP leaders came to me and asked me to be part of a lawsuit they wanted to file on my behalf and that of three other women, to challenge segregation on public buses.

Martin Luther King fought for blacks, and democratic whites were with him.

I heard of Martin Luther King Jr. when I was 15 years old. I heard of Rosa Parks. And I met Dr. King in 1958 at the age of 18. I met Rosa Parks ... But to pick up a fun comic book - some people used to call them "funny books" - to pick this little book up, it sold for 10 cents, 12 pages or 14 pages? 14 pages I digested. And it inspired me. And I said to myself, "If the people of Montgomery can do this, maybe I can do something. Maybe I can make a contribution."

I want to play Martin Luther King. That is absolutely a role and a character who is important to the landscape of the world that I really want to play.

I realized that my grandfather walked with Martin Luther King forty years ago. That was his dream. And in his little way, he helped us get closer to where we are today.

In many ways, history is marked as 'before' and 'after' Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.

The goal of Dr. Martin Luther King is to give Negroes a chance to sit in a segregated restaurant beside the same white man who had brutalized them for 400 years.