Best 292 quotes in «civil rights quotes» category

If you want to advocate for change, observe critically an ongoing struggle a group of people encounter for periods of time and formulate a solution that adequately address the problem for social justice.

I lift my voice for goodness and equality. I inform the powerful and hold them accountable. For it gives a PURPOSE to my PAIN.

I had decided that I would not go anywhere with a piece of paper in my hand asking white folks for any favors. I had made that decision myself, as an individual.

In 1967, only 4% of Americans approved of interracial marriage, yet the Supreme Court dismissed the desire of 96% of Americans who did not support it in order to preserve the rights of the minority.

I had no way of predicting that Selma to Montgomery was indeed to be the last great civil rights march of the era, and that everything afterward would indeed by 'post-civil rights.

In not a single one of these little campaigns was I victorious. In other words, in each case, I personally failed, but I have lived to see the thesis upon which I was operating vindicated. And what I very often say is that I’ve lived to see my lost causes found.

Initially, the purveyors of racism need no more than the silent acquiescence of the public ... [I]t is never too soon to confront bigotry and racism whenever, wherever, and in whatever form it raises its ugly head. It is incumbent upon all people to confront even the slightest hint of racist thought or action with zero tolerance.

…in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow it’s been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.

In terms of our elected officials, I think we need to ask...: How far should we go with our need to know before we completely veer off into the personal and the private and leave behind any chance of having a legitimate debate or discussion or discourse about the issues at hand?

In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies...but the silence of our friends. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

It [freedom] rings bells to remind humanity that the most precious gifts in life––like children and love and time––must never be taken for granted.

I remembered how tough it was getting black people in large tenements to come together to build a playground. The enemy was not the Klan by the inside-outside lock that racism and classism had on the minds of the people: It operated from the inside through self-hate and self-doubt, and from the outside through the police, carnivorous landlords, and the welfare system.

I recall Ghandi said ultimately all things devolve into the political, but I'd argue that all things devolve into pro-people and anti-people. And I can pose the question, which side are you on?

It is only through examining history that you become aware of where you stand within the continuum of change.

It is difficult to picture the rich, hard-nosed advisors of James I being overly concerned about the rights of vagabonds and felons. But this was a period that was especially suspicious of arbitrary acts by the Crown against individuals. There was no law enabling the crown to exile anyone, including the baser convict, into forced labour. According to legal scholars, the Magna Carta itself protected even them. The Privy Councillors therefore dressed up what was to befall the convicts and presented the decree authorising their transportation as an act of royal mercy. The convicts were to be reprieved from death in exchange for accepting transportation. (71-71)

It is an artist's duty to reflect the times.

It is important for upcoming activists to study American history, as well as political and philosophical thought. It is unlikely that what you hope to accomplish is new. Current activism is almost always linked to the history of revolution worldwide, and Americans have a special connection to this legacy because our nation was born out of the struggle against tyranny.

It is not enough for the church to be active in the realm of ideas; it must move out to the arena of social action.

It seems to me that the greatest triumph of any human rights movement, be it fighting for racial, religious, sexual or gender equality – is to achieve that moment where eyes are opened so wide that a sort of blindness sets in. I don’t care if someone is black, white, gay or straight. I don’t care if a woman has children or no – I just want to know who they are. [...] At the end of the day, gender differences seem to me to be just a tiny, tiny drop in the great expanse of things that make people unique. Unique, not ‘different’, not ‘other’ merely another piece of that great teaming mass that makes up the wonderfully rich, thrillingly varied definition of ‘humanity’." [Playing Butch: Blog entry, February 24, 2014]

It's illegal to deny people their records due to race or gender. Adoptees deserve the same rights and protections.

It's terrifying to think you could become the next statistic.

It was just tiresome thinking about folks having to fight for the least little thing. I loved my people for fighting, but hated the reason why, and that left me with that crosscut notion of pride and anger pulling in different directions, two kinds of muscle fighting for the same piece of bone.

Knocking on doors wasn't working. We had to try something else. Remember the kids whose natural curiosity brought them into our little office on the corner? We set up a Freedom School that was fashioned after the SNCC Freedom Schools in Mississippi and other places.

Laurens, Lafayette, and Hamilton--all roughly the same age-- had become inseparable when they discovered they shared the conviction that all men should be free, including blacks.

...legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Libraries are about books. Books have no color. And they don't care who reads them.

It is no longer enough to just be a good person. We must work to be the next Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King. It is noble to strive to be the size of the bronze giant they dedicated this morning in the building behind me. Fredrick Douglas’ time was in the 1800; King’s time has passed. This is our time. This is the next long march toward civil rights and we shall overcome.

I was brought up by people who loved others. I love people. We had no animosity. We had no feeling that we hate anyone.

I wasn’t looking for notoriety [when we marched]. But if that’s what it took [to get attention], I didn’t care how many licks I got. It just made me even more determined to fight for our cause.

Leaders who formulate positive ideas and implement effective change in their community can help others overcome difficult economic and social hardships.

Living every day knowing people were keeping him down because of the color of his skin, Foster said, "You feel like you are a piece of dynamite ready to explode. The only thing it takes is but a little fire--a cigarette butt--and light the fuse." His explosion came one day at work. "I was pretty good in the computation laboratory; and I had one of my supervisors tell me he wanted me to train another person in that unit [a white man] and 'I want to make him your boss.' That bomb went off--my bomb. He didn't get any training from me and never did he become my damn boss!

Love is a better way.

Lush, detailed, total-immersion storytelling.–Kirkus Review

Make noise for justice. Make noise for inclusion. Make noise for empathy. Make noise for our planet. Make noise for civil rights. Make noise for women’s rights. Make noise for compassion. Make noise for LOVE.

Many white men fear retaliation. The job of the Negro is to show them that they have nothing to fear, that the Negro understands and forgives and is ready to forget the past. He must convince the white man that all he seeks is justice, for both himself and the white man.

May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him

Meeting Nelson Mandela gave me the perspective I needed…that real change happens slowly, not just over months and years but over decades and lifetimes.

Merger Evers/John F. Kennedy/Malcolm X/Martin Luther King/Robert Kennedy/Che Guevara/Patrice Lamumba/George Jackson/Cynthia Wesley/Addie Mae Collins/Denise McNair/Carole Robertson/Viola Liuzzo It was a decade marked by death. Violent and inevitable. Funerals became engraved on the brain, intensifying the ephemeral nature of life. For many in the South it was a decade reminiscent of earlier times, when oak trees sighed over their burdens in the wind; Spanish moss draggled blood to the ground; amen corners creaked with grief; and the thrill of being able, once again, to endure unendurable loss produced so profound an ecstasy in mourners that they strutted, without noticing their feet, along the thin backs of benches: their piercing shouts of anguish and joy never interrupted by an inglorious fall. They shared rituals for the dead to be remembered.

My civil rights will not be trampled, and I say this not for me but for my children, and all those who yearn to breathe free. Those who make your Apple products at Foxxcon, those who languish in prisons in Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. Those homosexuals who are stoned to death in the streets of Egypt or Iran, while our so-called civil rights leaders hold coffee klatches with third graders in the White House.

My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist.

Never be content to sit back and watch as others' rights are trampled upon. Your rights could be next.

No American is UnAmerican.

Nine owls have squawked out the rules and the hawks will talk, so soon they’ll come marching out of the woodpile and the woodwork—sore-head, sore-foot, right up close, one-butt-shuffling into history but demanding praise and kind treatment for deeds undone, for lessons unlearned. But studying war once more...

Nobody is going to notice Billie. People like us are invisible.

Nobody should pay for attaining an education because it can help us boost our cognitive and emotional intelligence which is extremely essential for our survival.

No matter what I suffered in my pursuit of freedom, I always took strength from the fact that I was fighting with and for my own people. Bram was a free man who fought against his own people to ensure the freedom of others

Non Violence and Religion: Both designed to keep the oppressed from murdering their oppressors.

Now that the sit-in organizers had "the ball rolling," they had another trick up their sleeves. "As you know, black people like to dress," Richard Hall said. "So at Easter everybody would go out and buy an outfit generally, if they could afford it." In fact, according to Dr. Hereford, the Easter clothing splurge was the largest purchase most black Huntsvillians made all year (the second largest being for Christmas toys). On a visit to Nashville in the middle of the Huntsville protests, Hereford learned about a protest called "Blue Jean Easter" where African Americans, "instead of buying $100 suits and $100 dresses, they decided to spend five dollars on a pair of blue jeans for Easter, and I brought the idea back to Huntsville...The economic toll downtown was enormous. "There were twenty thousand black people in Madison County," Hereford said, "and ten thousand in the city, and if there are even ten thousand black people failing to buy $90 or $100 Easter outfits, that's a lot of money and losses for the merchants downtown. It could cost them a million dollars or more." As an extra, aded dig at the storeowners, Hereford said, people did not even buy their blue jeans in Huntsville...

Objection! This defendant, evil genius that he is, has through his abhorrent actions managed to racially discriminate against every race all at the same time, to say nothing of his unabashed slaveholding. The state of California feels that it has more than enough evidence to prove that the defendant is in abject violation of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1871, 1957, 1964 and 1968, the Equal Rights Act of 1963, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and at least six of the goddamn Ten Commandments.

Only a "dry as dust" religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an Earthly hell.