Quotes About Civil rights

The history of Oregon is partially the history of a state that legislated not wanting black people around.

On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act. Its enactment, following the longest continuous debate in the history of the U.S. Senate, enshrined into law the basic principle upon which our country was founded - that all people are created equal.

I grew up in Houston, and I remember we had separate drinking fountains, and black people sat in the balcony of the theater... We had an African-American housekeeper growing up who was really like my second mother. I thought it was silly - hatred just because of the color of somebody's skin.

Things were tough. Segregation was all around - in the schools, the buses, the restaurants, the theaters. But Dr. King worked hard for black people to have a fair share.

res publica, literally 'the thing belonging to the people', and the origin of the modern term republic.

A Black man has no rights that a White man is bound to respect.

Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below.

Ron Paul states that if we are want to maintain what liberty we have left in our republic, millions, need to start taking to the streets in Peaceful protests. Dr. Paul believes in Resistance without violence.

Rather than waiting for future trials to determine rules that will impact every citizen, Congress should step in and write a law that takes every American's rights into consideration.

It is unclear exactly how many law enforcement agencies are currently using this capability, but it is reasonable to say that while resource limitations used to discourage the government from tracking you without a good reason, these constraints have largely disappeared.

I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964

They don't worship at the altar of forced busing and mandatory quotas. They don't believe you can remedy past discrimination by mandating new discrimination. (Defending his nominees for Civil Rights Commission)

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... and other people would be also free.

I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home.

Something of Rosa

As secretary of the NAACP, I recorded and sent membership payments to the national office, answered telephones, wrote letters, and sent out press releases to the newspapers. One of my main duties was to keep a record of cases of discrimination or unfair treatment or acts of violence against black people.

Arrest me for sitting on a bus? You may do that.

I had given up my seat before, but this day, I was especially tired. Tired from my work as a seamstress, and tired from the ache in my heart.

All I was doing was trying to get home from work.

At the time i didn't realize why there was so much Klan activity, but later I learned that it was because African-American soldiers werre returning from World War Iasn acting as if they deserved equal rights because they had served their country.

Even when there was segregation there was plenty of integration in the South, but it was for the benefit and convenience of the white person, not us.

Son, when I appoint a nigger to the bench, I want everybody to know he's a nigger. [Said to an aide in 1965 regarding the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as associate justice of the Supreme Court]

Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass. [Said to Senator John Stennis (D-MS) during debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1957]

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.