Quotes About Civil rights

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation of its day, and included women's rights as part of its reforms. Ironically, the section on women's rights was added by a senator from Virginia who opposed the whole thing and was said to be sure that if he stuck something about womens' rights into it, it would never pass. The bill passed anyway, though, much to the chagrin of a certain wiener from Virginia.

Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't carry just a piece of cloth to symbolize his belief in racial equality he carried the American flag.

Dr. King used Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and to passive resistance.

It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're afraid to use an expression like that, you should get back in the cotton patch, you should get back in the alley.

Back in 1978, when I was still in high school, I went to see a Broadway show, 'Paul Robeson,' starring James Earl Jones. It was all about Robeson's journey as a human being, an artist, a champion of civil rights. Had I not seen the play, I might not have known who Robeson was. I was certainly never taught about him in school.

If you ask me whether the election of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream, I say, 'No, it's just a down payment.'

The John Lewis I know is a peacemaker.

If you know anything about what a lot of the senior leaders at Amazon do in their free time, they spend a lot of time on civil liberties. It's something that's very important to me and I think a lot of my peers.

My friends were dropping like flies, and the government wasn't doing anything. You don't watch an entire generation take water hoses and dogs on the front line during the '60s or watch another generation perish from AIDS and then get to drive around in big cars and do nothing.

I was born in Decatur, was raised there, but I never in my life was permitted to vote there.

Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.

The basic fact is that for the person without civil rights, death is always present in the background, forever dancing, each second of the day, before his eyes.

Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freeman with votes in their hands are left without education.

The most significant civil rights problem is voting. Each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 make it the responsibility of the Department of Justice to protect that right.

It is an honor to be awarded with such a high rating from an organization as well respected as the NAACP. I am pleased that the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the nation, has recognized my voting record.

Well, my personal mission statement is that we want marriage equality in all 50 states. We want it not to be a state-by-state issue. We don't want it to be something the majority is voting on. I don't think the civil rights of any minority should be in the hands of any majority.

We need a modern people's lobby that empowers all of us to choose our leaders and set our agenda. Imagine voting for a president we're truly excited about. Imagine a government that promotes capitalism and civil rights.

Too many people fought too hard to make sure all citizens of all colors, races, ethnicities, genders, and abilities can vote to think that not voting somehow sends a message.

Voting in our country has never been easy, and unfortunately, it has never been guaranteed for everyone. But through the work of brave civil rights leaders, some of whom died for the cause, by the early 2000s we were at a point where most, but still not all, people who wanted to vote could do so.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge - which in 2013 was declared a National Historic Landmark - isn't symbolic of the Civil War in a meaningful way. It is, however, the modern-day battlefield where the voting rights movement was born.

What gets lost is that the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights.

Census data is used to determine more than $675 billion in federal funding; it is a demographic Rosetta Stone that is referenced in the drawing of congressional districts, each states number of Electoral College votes and the application of civil rights laws, including the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act.

I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly.

Because when we look at the modern civil rights movement under the leadership of my father and the team that he developed, it was at the federal level that we were able to appeal to bring about justice, whether it was in relationship to voting rights - just a number of issues.