Quotes About Civil rights

I grew up in a segregated community: I couldn't go to the public schools, beaches, certain parts of town.

I went to St. James Methodist Church in Clinton, a segregated church on the other side of the tracks.

You spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.

The law can seem remote, arcane, the stuff of specialists. But it isn't, because for those of us who live in democracies, the law begins with us.

Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett had tried to block the entrance to the University of Mississippi of James Meredith, an African American veteran of the United States Air Force. Georgia Senator Richard Russell, after whom one of the three United States Senate office buildings is named, lauded the "great and courageous governor of Mississippi" and lamented: "It is regretful that we have no one on the Supreme Court that recognizes the fundamentals of democracy.

Most of the progressive changes in this country—from civil rights to Medicare, from strong environmental laws to Obamacare—happened in the face of southern resistance, with few southern votes in the Congress.

Liberty and justice for all" were beautiful words, but the ugly fact was that liberty and justice were only for white males.

Thousands like me kept saying, "Let us in a little. Give us a piece of the pie." What hap- pened? Watts, Newark, Hartford. And what was the re- action? We started to hear a new jargon about "the urban crisis" and "law and order" and "crime in the streets.

One bill that I introduced should become law in every state, but unfortunately it did not succeed even in New York. It would have made it mandatory for policemen to success- fully complete courses in civil rights, civil liberties, minority problems, and race relations before they are appointed to a police department.

Three black men walked past us wearing airline uniforms, visored caps, white pants and jackets whose shoulders bristled with epaulettes. Black pilots? Black captains? It was 1962. In our country, the cradle of democracy, whose anthem boasted 'the land of the free, the home of the brave,' the only black men in our airports fueled planes, cleaned cabins, loaded food or were skycaps, racing the pavement for tips.

Stamps, Arkansas, was Chitlin' Switch, Georgia; Hang 'Em High, Alabama; Don't Let the Sun Set on You Here, Nigger, Mississippi; or any other name just as descriptive. People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate.

People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream.

Nothing's wrong with going to jail for something you believe in. Remember, jail was made for people. Not horses.

There can be no love without justice. Until we live in a culture that no only respects but also upholds basic civil rights for children, most children will not know love.

It was an accepted fact among black people that the leaders who were most revered and respected were men. Black activists defined freedom as gaining the right to participate as full citizens in American culture; they were not rejecting the value system of that culture. Consequently, they did not question the rightness of patriarchy.

No puede haber amor sin justicia. Hasta que la cultura en la que vivimos no haya aprendido a respetar y defender los derechos civiles fundamentales de los niños, la mayoría de ellos no llegará a conocer el amor. En nuestra sociedad, el hogar privado es la única esfera institucionalizada de poder que fácilmente puede convertirse en autocrática y fascista.

I would say to Republicans that when you look at civil rights legislation that took place in the 1960s, it took a bipartisan effort to get those things done, and so what I would tell my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, is let's come together, and let's be for fairness.

Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'

We are a nation of innovators and problem-solvers who sparked revolutions in democratic government, civil rights, communications, flight, rural electrification and technology. We are a country defined by ideals now in need of rescue.

One of two historically African American communities that sprang up along the Mississippi Gulf Coast after emancipation, North Gulfport has always been a place where residents have had fewer civic resources than those extended to other outlying communities.

Like the majority of Atlanta's residents, I am Black. Our city helped birth the modern civil rights movement, and I am the daughter of a civil rights leader.

The resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder is met with both pride and disappointment by the Civil Rights community. We are proud that he has been the best Attorney General on Civil Rights in U.S. history and disappointed because he leaves at a critical time when we need his continued diligence most.

I'd like to think I would have signed the Civil Rights bill and wouldn't have had any issues with it.

By the 1960s, many of us believed that the Civil Rights Movement could eliminate racism in America during our lifetime. But despite significant progress, racism remains.