Quotes About Civil rights

The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.

Nothing in the "Letter," nothing in the bedlam of Birmingham or its bittersweet aftermath, suggest that King viewed America as a providential nation whose destiny was freedom. Rather, that exceptional nation first had to be created by the exceptionally brave and spiritual people of the civil rights movement.

Looking back in 1964, King observed, "Negroes have straightened their backs in Albany. And once a man straightens his back you can't ride him anymore.

Instead of sitting down at lunch counters, Wallace vowed to stand in the entranceway to keep blacks out of the University of Alabama.

Recall that even the liberal-minded John Locke in the seventeenth century argued against granting civil rights to atheists: 'Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold on an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.'6 This is not to endorse these sentiments, merely to note that they exist.

Frederick Douglass, who had encountered racism even within abolitionist ranks, considered Lincoln a fundamentally decent individual. "He treated me as a man," Douglass remarked in 1864, "he did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the color of our skins.

Black culture has contributed hugely to American society: The civil rights movement brought meaning to American notions of equality and freedom; black contributions to politics, science, music, and art have helped enrich all of us. To demean these accomplishments and contributions by listing rap among them is to demean black culture as a whole.

On same-sex marriage, the question is not how same-sex marriage hurts your marriage – that's a nonsensical and stupid question, like asking how enslavement of others hurts you personally.

At that time you were insulted by law clerks, excluded from white bar associations and when I was in court, I was lucky to be called Ben, usually it was just 'boy.' [But] the judges were always fair. The discrimination of those days has changed and, today, the South is ahead of the North in many respects in civil rights progress.

Ralph Bunche

We need comprehensive immigration reform. Dr. King wouldn't be pleased at all to know that there are millions of people living in the shadow, living in fear in places like Georgia and Alabama.

It would be refreshing to have a politician try to defend guns without any reference to the Second Amendment, but on the merits of guns.

Our country's history is a generation-spanning journey to effectuate the notion that 'all men are created equal' for the members of our ever-expanding national family: women, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, gays and lesbians, the disabled, immigrants, and refugees.

Most blacks have lost the moral authority to claim the mantle of civil rights because they refuse to stand for what is right.

Although his crusade in 1957 occurred at a time in our nation's history when race divided all, Reverend Graham refused to preach in segregated audiences.

If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.

There are some rights that are so fundamental to our society that you'd think the public debate would be closed on them. The right of every American citizen to vote - regardless of age, race, or income level - is one of them.

In 1965, the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7 was planned to dramatize to the state of Alabama and to the nation that people of color wanted to register to vote.

I feel George Wallace symbolizes something in the past which America has rejected.

U.S. v. Arizona is a landmark case not just because of the constitutional issues related to who regulates and enforces immigration, but because of its civil rights implications, too.

In every community in Illinois, same-sex couples have chosen to join together and, in many instances, to raise families of their own. These couples are our relatives and friends, our neighbors, co-workers and parents of our children's classmates. They deserve the same rights and responsibilities that civil marriage offers straight couples.

Black history is American history.

As we continue our fight to advance civil rights and racial justice, we need to not only recognize but celebrate how Hip Hop and Black Americans have given so much to our culture and our country.

However flawed democracy is, it is still the only answer.