Quotes About Civil rights

Well, my view before was a Western view, and I certainly understand marriage equality and civil rights, equal rights for all, but having visited developing nations and some of the poorest nations in the world, I realize how deep it goes and how much work really needs to be done to create equality for all.

I know a few Negroes I respect and admire, for they got what they wanted by working for it." But most blacks were not quite so good, Ledford asserted. "I've lost my respect for them, except the few I told you about because they want to force themselves on us…. Why doesn't the Negro leave us alone and mind his own business and quit thinking he's too good for our laws." The laws Ledford referred to were the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

This follows his comment on much time spent in prison for freedom speeches and preaching. "I always try to do a little converting when I'm in Jail.

We're trying to win the right to vote and we have to focus the attention of the world on that. We can't do that making legal cases. We have to make the case in the court of public opinion.

Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.

lie together in one short sentence: namely, that we have acquired a right 1. To choose our own governors. 2. To cashier them for misconduct. 3. To frame a government for ourselves. This new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights

It was necessary for black people to protest against segregation, King argued, to avoid cooperating with an evil system. If one passively accepted injustice, one enabled it to continue.

I was a child when the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King occurred, and I wanted to hear what was going on. I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to contribute in the best way I possibly could.

My mom was a teacher. In the 1960s and '70s, she taught history at two largely African American public high schools in Washington, D.C. - McKinley Tech and H.D. Woodson. Her example taught me the importance of equality for all Americans.

In 1985, I was arrested, along with my mother and brother, Martin III, in a protest against apartheid at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C.

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.'

Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

Martin Luther King Jr. could have argued that separate water fountains were too expensive, a waste of money. He would have been right about that. But cost was beside the point.

I have loved the Department of Justice ever since, as a young boy, I watched Robert Kennedy prove during the Civil Rights Movement how the department can - and must - always be a force for that which is right.

I remember the first time seeing myself on TV, when my family was watching the documentary 'Eyes on the Prize' for the first time. There were pictures of people going up the school stairs, and Mom said, 'Oh, that's you!' I said, 'I can't believe this. This is important.'

The civil rights movement is something I've looked into a lot. When I was about 23, I started reading up on it all and watching TV programmes.

People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same.

The separate water foundations, park benches, bathrooms and restaurants of the Jim Crow South startled me. These experiences motivated my lifelong study of the status of African Americans and the sources of improvement in that status.

The U.S. Constitution has absorbed the end of slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights and Watergate.

Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case.

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.

Obama's not down for the civil rights struggle, and he certainly wasn't down for the apartheid struggle, but he's clearly gonna take advantage of it and insert himself in such a way as to make it look like he is single-handedly responsible for apartheid going by the wayside.

Alabama's Black Belt region played a central role in both the history of our great state and our country. We cannot lose sight of the Black Belt's significant impact in the civil rights movement and the fact that this area is home to some of our state's most celebrated cultural figures.