Civil Rights Movement Quotes

The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.

What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.

One hundred years ago the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin…. The negro today asks for justice. We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we answer “Patience.”

The March on Washington was not a climax but a new beginning.

I may not be able to do it but I’ll die trying.

The history of American democracy, to say the least, has been checkered. Our nation was founded at a time when people of African descent were held in bondage. After slavery was abolished, they were forced to endure legal discrimination for another 100 years.

If we can’t sit at the table of democracy, then we’ll knock the fucking legs off. But before we tear it completely down, they will move to build a better one, rather than see this one destroyed.

Much of the foundation of our criminal justice system is derived from slave patrols and was created when African Americans could still be bought, sold, and traded.

Before, the Negro in the South had always looked on the defensive, cringing. This time they were taking the initiative.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

Back then I was still listening to rhythm and blues, and my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger concert. And it gelled. He made all the sense in the world to me. I got addicted to his albums, and then Belafonte and Odetta - they were the people who seemed to fuse things that were important to me into music. I think Pete the most because he did what he did to the point where he took those enormous risks and then paid for them.

I was still in college when 'To Kill a Mockingbird' came out in 1960. I remember it had a kind of an electrifying effect on this country; this was a time when there were a lot of good books coming out.

I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.

The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination.

The so called Negro Movement is part of the attempted takeover of our country by the lazy, the indolent, the beatnicks and by some misguided religionists and bleeding hearts.

Schools don't teach American history that well, especially a lot of black American history.

When my sixth grade teacher opened the class with subtle praise for the guardsmen shooting four people to death at Kent State, I'd given up arguing with her by that point. But I was very riled up inside and vowed that I would never forget that.

The efforts of Black Lives Matter to bring attention to the all-too-frequent instances of unjustified violence being used by policemen may not be paying off as quickly as some might hope.

I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.

Ferguson shows the power of social media. This could have not been a story. Or it could have just been a local story. Or it could have been something that we saw only from a distance, through the usual filters. Instead, it gathered steam.

When I met Jack Kennedy, he was a serious young man with a dream. He was not a womanizer, not as I understood the term.

Too many people struggled, suffered, and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote.

We could beat back Kennedy on Civil Rights, but Lyndon [Johnson] knows how to beat us.

When I was 16, the guest speaker was King. And I was completely overwhelmed because I had been studying nonviolence, talking about it, reading about it, but here it was happening, here it was people boycotting the buses and people on the streets and taking risks, which I think was the key.