Quotes About Civil rights

The right to marry is vital in society. It's a right that's older than the Bill of Rights because it goes back to the common law.

John Lewis' vital role in the civil rights movement will never be forgotten, and his legacy will forever be acknowledged by our state and our country.

I vividly remember segregation - separate schools, sitting in the balcony at the movie theater, being barred from the public swimming pool.

The world is better because of Coretta Scott King. She affected countless lives and her voice will be deeply missed, especially by those who carry on her incredible undertaking.

From our nation's founding to the Civil Rights movement, Virginians have always stood up to fight for their most foundational right - a voice in our government.

Throughout my years championing for civil rights, analyzing politics and advocating on behalf of the voiceless, I am disturbed the most when harmless children suffer because of politics or detrimental policies.

The foundation of the house of civil rights is in the voices of all the great civil rights leaders and the soul of every person who heard them. It's in the hands of every person who folded a leaflet for change, and it's in the courage of every person who changed.

The horrific cases in Ferguson, in Staten Island with the death of Eric Garner, and all across the country serve as stark reminders that we must have a say in who polices us, and how that policing is done. We must, we must, let our voices be heard on Election Day.

America's Founders were committed to a wide-open public forum in which all voices and perspectives could have a chance of being heard.

I think many of the ideas that opened up in the '60s got implemented in the '70s and that certain minority voices that were not being heard in the '60s, like women and gay people, were being heard in the '70s. Black Civil Rights had also found its foothold, and those ideas were also very pertinent.

I think 'I Spy,' still when you look at it, speaks volumes in terms of propaganda for equality. It's just magnificent.

The colored man is in the South to stay there. He will not leave it voluntarily and he cannot be driven out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out.

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote.

Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test.

My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did.

For the Negro, Andrew Johnson did less than nothing when once he realized that the chief beneficiary of labor and economic reform in the South would be freedmen. His inability to picture Negroes as men made him oppose efforts to give them land; oppose national efforts to educate them; and above all things, oppose their rights to vote.

We need an amendment that gives us the right to vote protected by the federal government and the Constitution.

All we want is to carry out the greatest expression of a free democracy and vote on Catalonia's future. This is not about independence: it is about fundamental civil rights and the universal right of self-determination.

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

If everyone on the Court always voted for the prosecution against the defendant, for the corporation against the plaintiffs, and for the government against the condemned, a vital spark of American democracy would be extinguished.

Blacks as a group have voted Democratic since the 1930s. The GOP has not courted them in any real way since the 1960s, focusing instead on attracting white constituencies hostile to civil rights and African-Americans in general.

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.

When I was growing up in rural Alabama, it was impossible for me to register to vote. I didn't become a registered voter until I moved to Tennessee, to Nashville, as a student.