The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute. — Julian Bond
The tragedy of the civil rights movement is that just as it achieved the beginning of the end of racial segregation, white educated elites became swept up in the glamour of the sexual revolution. — Maggie Gallagher
Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together. — Dorothy Height
Our involvement in the civil rights movement is what sent us into our involvement against apartheid. — Mary Jane Patterson
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts. — Bayard Rustin
Unlike mainstream civil rights groups, which merely sought integration of blacks into the existing order, SNCC sought structural changes in American society itself. — Julian Bond
The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time. — Jackie Robinson
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Civil Rights Act. — Bobby Scott
Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination. — Thomas Sowell
There is no coloration to rights. Everybody has rights. I don't care who you are, where you come from. You got rights. I got rights. All God's children got rights. — Julian Bond
There are those who say to you -- we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late. — Hubert Humphrey
The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights — Hubert H. Humphrey
Justice is indivisible. You can't decide who gets civil rights and who doesn't. — Angela Davis
It is in the American tradition to stand up for one's rights--even if the new way to stand up for one's rights is to sit down. — John F. Kennedy
Martin Luther King Civil Rights Movement Quotes
Obama has little or nothing to do with the civil-rights movement. His roots are in Kenya, and he is shaped far more by anti-colonialism than by anything that Martin Luther King said or did. — Dinesh D'Souza
Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens. — David Cameron
I was raised in Arizona, and I went to public school, and the extent of my knowledge of the civil-rights movement was the story of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder how much my generation knows. — Emma Stone
Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip top if you must, but take the step.
Martin Luther King (Jr.) during the civil rights movement used to exclaim that he looked forward to heaven where he would be "Free at last." That is the inscription on his tomb in Atlanta. — Billy Graham
I took an interest in the Civil Rights Movement. I listened to Martin Luther King. The Vietnam War was raging. When I was 18, I was eligible for the draft, but when I went to be tested, I didn't qualify. — Radhanath Swami
I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive. — Cory Booker
Live your life. Take chances. Be crazy. Don't wait. Because right now is the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be again.
I think that for many of us, the years of the Civil Rights movements - Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy running for president in 1968 to end the war and so forth - these were defining moment in terms of trying to hold government accountable and have a level of responsibility and truth-telling. — John F. Kerry
In that respect, Martin Luther King, whom A.J.[Muste] advised in the civil rights movement, was also a radical pacifist. — Nat Hentoff
We chose to frame "March" around the inauguration of Barack Obama because it was such an important moment in the story of the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't the fulfillment of Dr. [Martin Luther] King's dream, but it was a major down payment. — Andrew Aydin
Most students graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and "I Have a Dream." And that's it! — Andrew Aydin
Women's Civil Rights Movement Quotes
It is not alone that justice is wounded by denying women a part in the making of the civilized world - a more immediate wrong is the way the movement for a fuller, freer life for all human beings is hampered. — Ida Tarbell
You could not be in the civil rights movement without having an appreciation for everybody's rights. That these rights are not divisible - not something men have and women don't and so on. — Julian Bond
We have the history of slavery or inequality to women, and now the civil rights movement of the 21st century is the struggle for equality for the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. And I think it's important for Americans to know about the times that we failed. — George Takei
If things go wrong, don’t go with them.
In our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write. — Tom Morello
Today women in many countries are taking part in various types of movements of protest, some of which are serious struggles for economic and social emancipation . — Kumari Jayawardena
I've been there for so many crossroads in American history. My whole political life spans the birth of the environmental movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, putting an end to unjust wars, and so and so. — Barbara Boxer
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyways.
Newsman are the ones who - without them we don't have a civil rights movement, we don't have a women's movement, we don't have a Vietnam movement. — George Clooney
There's a pattern of the pathway opening in a certain way. We stared thinking, there's so many wonderful films about civil rights movements, but there isn't even one yet about the women's movement? It's hard to capture because it's so sprawling, and it's an ideology. — Marisa Tomei
In cultural history, the civil rights movement came before the women's movement. — Marisa Tomei
In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news. — Bob Edwards
Civil Right Movement Quotes
I just couldn't move. History had me glued to the seat. — Claudette Colvin
Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders. — Diane Nash
There is a source of power in each of us that we don't realize until we take responsibility. — Diane Nash
Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right.
The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others. — Julian Bond
There is no power in the world that can stop the forward march of free men and women when they are joined in the solidarity of human brotherhood. — Walter Reuther
Jim Crow is alive and it's dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, my friend, instead of a white robe. — Myrlie Evers-Williams
Knowledge is having the right answer. Intelligence is asking the right questions.
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
That's what he was saying, the civil rights movement - judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It's by my character. — Pam Grier
Even in the civil rights movement, there were so many unbelievable women. They never, ever received the credit that they should have received. They did all of the, and I cannot say it, they did all of the dirty work. Hard work. — John Lewis
John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university. — Russell Banks
Civil Rights Quotes
I don't call myself a white supremacist. I'm a civil rights activist concerned about European-American rights. — David Duke
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. — Frederick Douglass
In Tanganyika we believe that only evil, Godless men would
make the color of a mans skin the criteria for granting him civil
rights. — Julius Nyerere
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat
A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess. — A. Philip Randolph
I had a right to my own political opinions. I am a Southern woman, born with Revolutionary blood in my veins. Freedom of speech and of thought were my birthright, guaranteed, signed and sealed by the blood of our fathers. — Rose O'Neal Greenhow
To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. — Thurgood Marshall
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. — John Stuart Mill
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less — Susan B. Anthony
Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it. — Dick Gregory
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. — William O. Douglas
Race to race, the Republicans are putting up candidates that are quite far out of the mainstream in terms of should we have passed the Civil Rights Act or does Social Security need to exist. — Tim Kaine
No Republican questions or disputes civil rights. I have never wavered in my support for civil rights or the civil rights act. — Rand Paul
Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole. — Lyndon B. Johnson
It's time for Congress to act, restore the Voting Rights Act, and take action to prevent voter disenfranchisem ent. As your next Congresswoman, I will stand up to the extremists in the Republican Party to ensure civil rights are protected for everyone. — Alma Adams
Secession, like any other REVOLUTIONARY ACT, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms. — Andrew Jackson
Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts. — Roger Wicker
I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. — Abraham Lincoln
I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary. — Ronald Reagan
Look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole - yet mass incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis). — Michelle Alexander
I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare. — Malcolm X
Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger. — Michael N. Castle
The Klan had used fear, intimidation and murder to brutally oppress over African-Americans who sought justice and equality and it sought to respond to the young workers of the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the same way. — Charles Rangel
And when the time is right, I hope that African Americans will again look to the party of emancipation, civil liberty, and individual freedom. — Rand Paul
There's good reason to be excited. You have the first woman running who is qualified, and a very attractive African-American who has demonstrated crossover appeal. I got involved in politics 40 years ago during the civil rights movement, so yes, it's an exciting thing. — Joe Biden
Civil Rights Leaders Quotes
You didn't see me on television, you didn't see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders. — Ella Baker
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue... whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. — John F. Kennedy
Neither my great-grandfather an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. an NAACP leader, my father Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda. — Alveda King
I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader. — Adam Lambert
As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement. — James T. Walsh
By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader. — Constance Baker Motley
Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life. — Andrew Young
My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well. — Janis Ian
In my lifetime, we have lost a President, a Civil Rights leader and a Presidential candidate - all to gun violence. — Marianne Williamson
[Civil right leaders]themselves in their pronouncements will tell you they need white allies, they need white help, they need white this. — Malcolm X
Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Quotes
The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for often will. — Antonin Scalia
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was vigorously and vociferously opposed by the Southern states. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law nonetheless. — Henry Rollins
I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. — Ronald Reagan
We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964. — Clarence Thomas
Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results. — Thomas Sowell
I like the idea of amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. It would be simple. It would be straightforward. — Donald Trump
The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope - that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow. — Aberjhani
This bill attempts to make sure that President Clinton is not allowed to do by Executive Order what Congress has declined to enact in the past two congressional sessions namely, to treat homosexuals as a special class protected under various titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. — Jesse Helms
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society. — Aberjhani
Racial Equality Quotes
I believe profoundly in the possibilities of democracy, but democracy needs to be emancipated from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, economic equality will elude us. — Angela Davis
To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow. — William Faulkner
My answer to the racial problem in America is to not deal with it at all. The founding fathers dealt with it when they made the Constitution. — James Meredith
As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. — Sonia Sotomayor
People need to free their minds of racial prejudice and believe in equality for all and freedom regardless of race. It would be a good thing if all people were treated equally and justly and not be discriminated against because of race or religion or anything that makes them different from others. — Rosa Parks
It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence . . . and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect. — Manitonquat
My fight is not for racial sameness but for racial equality and against racial prejudice and discrimination. — John Oliver Killens
It does no service to the cause of racial equality for white people to content themselves with judging themselves to be nonracist. Few people outside the clan or skinhead movements own up to all-out racism these days. White people must take the extra step. They must become anti-racist. — Clarence Page
Long before many of us were even conscious of our own degradation, these men [Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. DuBois] fought for African national and racial equality. — Kwame Nkrumah
I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any racial, ethnic or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences. — Sonia Sotomayor
Equal Rights Amendment Quotes
I always feel the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end. — Alice Paul
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. — Alice Paul
The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed. — James Madison
Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. — Alice Paul
History has shown us that, on extraordinarily rare occasions, it becomes necessary for the federal government to intervene on behalf of individuals whose 14th Amendment rights to legal due process and equal protection may be violated by a state. — Michael K. Simpson
My greatest disappointment in all the projects I worked on during the White House years was the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified. ... Why all the controversy and why such difficulty in giving women the protection of the Constitution that should have been theirs long ago? — Rosalynn Carter
I believe the equal rights amendment is a necessity of life for all citizens. The cabinet sometimes felt that I shouldn't be so outspoken. — Betty Ford
The Equal Rights Amendment would "turn holy wedlock into holy deadlock." — William Rehnquist
When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law. — Patricia Ireland
We are going to fight to pass the long over-due Equal Rights Amendment. — Bernie Sanders
The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against. — Thomas Sowell
I do think it's extremely important to acknowledge the gains that were made by the civil rights movement, the black power movement.Institutional transformations happened directly as a result of the movements that people, unnamed people, organized and gave their lives to. — Angela Davis
There was a resistance movement in the white community, and there was a determined civil rights movement by our neighbors and friends in the African-American community. They had right on their side. They conducted themselves in high standards, with courage and determination, and they were victorious. They overcame. — Jeff Sessions
Anyone who said he wasn't afraid during the civil rights movement was either a liar or without imagination. I was scared all the time. My hands didn't shake but inside I was shaking. — James L. Farmer, Jr.
The social issues outside of football are not as defined as they were earlier, when integration took place and certain rights were legislated. The Civil Rights movement is over. Individuals can buy homes wherever they want, travel first class wherever they want, eat wherever they want. — Jim Brown
Silver rights aren't as dramatic and captivating as civil rights. The movement isn't good TV and it's boring or inaccessible to many people. The forums were created to spread awareness, dialogue, and community to forge new partnerships and ideas. — John Hope Bryant
I think my experience at the University of Chicago, working in the civil rights movement, working in the peace movement, working with community organizations, did a lot to influence the politics that I have. — Bernie Sanders
I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy. The civil rights movement thrives on unity and inclusion, not division and exclusion. My husband's struggle parallels that of the gay rights movement. — Coretta Scott King
The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything. — Carol Moseley Braun
All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility. — Doris Lessing
The only tired I was, was tired of giving in. — Rosa Parks
My parents demonstrated against the Vietnam war, they were into the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, they started the first vegetarian restaurant in Pittsburgh. — Justin Sane
Maybe, just maybe, there should be a graphic novel dealing with the contribution of the women of the civil rights movement, to tell their story. The pain, the hurt. They raised their children. Some were working as maids, but when they left those kitchens, those homes, they made it to the mass meetings. And they put their bodies on the lines, also. — John Lewis
When I was trained as a journalist, as a race-relations reporter in Nashville covering the end of the civil-rights movement, we were strictly forbidden to use the first-person pronoun. There was kind of an electric charge around it. To come out from hiding and use the word 'I' carried a lot of fright for me. — Lawrence Wright
LISTEN: If you ever wondered what you would do if you were alive in the Civil Rights Movement, NOW IS THE TIME to find out. NOW. RIGHT NOW. — Shaun King
Now liberals compare their every riot, every traffic blockage, every Starbucks-window-smashing street protest to the civil rights movement -- which was only necessary because of them. — Ann Coulter
I think art can really serve to inspire a movement - and, of course, it has in the past. The Civil Rights movement wouldn't have the same resonance without the songs from everyone from Pete Seeger to Odetta to James Brown. — Saul Williams
Perhaps...the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
It's appalling that there have to be movements organized to give human beings the right to be human beings in the eyes of other human beings. — Glenda Jackson
I am very proud of the fact that I led the arts contingent on the civil rights march in the summer of '63. In many ways, I think it was the high-water mark of the civil rights movement. — Charlton Heston
When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement. — Bernice Johnson Reagon
The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals. — Jonathan Lethem
I've never been afraid to step out and to reach out and to move out in order to make things happen. — Victoria Gray Adams
Right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The civil rights movement was devoid of grace; it was using some unfortunate people as means to a communistic end. — Samuel Bowers
In fact, James Meredith who was once the icon of the civil rights movement. He supported me for governor! — David Duke
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
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