Quotes About Civil rights

I grew up reading Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

I think if people really read Martin Luther King, Jr., then they would begin to understand what he really represented.

We need a proper balance between rights and responsibilities in our laws.

I do not think we should be trying to save our freedom by killing the safeguards that keep our liberties.

All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. King for his bravery and commitment to civil rights and nonviolence that changed this nation - and world - for the better.

I thought I might find the real me in Oxford. Civil rights made me accept being a black intellectual. There was no such thing before, but then it was something. So I became one.

Codifying discrimination in our laws should be something we read about in American history, not on the front pages of today's American newspapers and magazines.

The only way to get gay issues off the front pages of Canadian newspapers is to grant gay and lesbian people our full civil equality and leave it alone.

Rosa Parks is rock and roll.

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.

Rosa Parks inspired many. She will not be forgotten.

When I was 15 years old in 1955, I heard of Rosa Parks. I heard the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. on our radio.

The action of Rosa Parks, the words and leadership of Dr. King inspired me. I was deeply inspired. I wanted to do something.

I thank those activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and others. They risked - and sometimes lost - their lives in the name of freedom and equality.

The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.

I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.

Many civil rights came about, not when they were passed into law, but because the federal government did what it should and saw them enforced.

I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.

My dad spent most of the '50s and early '60s actually acting as sort of an advance man for the Justice Department, as a civil rights lawyer. So it was actually reading his papers after he passed away a few years ago that first started me thinking about this... What fraction of your life do you spend in service to your fellow man?

The founding conference of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was held in May 1963 while the world's press was saturated with reports of the savage police response to the civil rights marches in Birmingham, Alabama. The assembled African leaders sent President John Kennedy an eloquent message: "The Negroes who, even while the [OAU] Conference was in session, have been subjected to the most inhuman treatment, who have been blasted with fire hoses cranked up to such

My earliest memories are when my father was the attorney general at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. We would go to visit him at the Justice Department and take the tunnel over to the FBI building and watch the sharpshooters at practice.

Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.

There are still civil rights issues. There are still people who can't be visited by their spouse in the hospital because they're gay. These are humanitarian issues. At the end of the day, all you want is for people to be happy in the pursuit of life, love and liberty.

In 1962, when I was 19, I visited India. With introductions from people involved in the U.S. civil rights movement, I was able to visit with several of the leading Gandhians there. The hundred-to-one difference in average per capita income between America and India at the time was a stark reality for the people who became my friends there.