Quotes About Civil rights

The Underground Railroad, which was the first integrated civil rights movement, is a part of our history that not a lot of us know about. And it's actually a very empowering side of our history.

You can't rise as a class. You have to rise individually. It's what many of the civil rights-era people don't understand.

I explained to the president that I've been pleased with my conversations with the Attorney General and Civil Rights Division regarding their helpful understanding that they aren't taking over this investigation, but are conducting a parallel review of the events that led to Michael Brown's death.

King thought he understood the white Southerner, having been born and reared in Georgia and trained a theologian.

In 1948, northern liberals inserted a civil rights plank into the national Democratic platform, prompting a walkout of Southern delegations - which then coalesced around the third party Dixiecrat candidacy of Strom Thurmond. An uneasy truce between national and Southern Democrats was reached after that election, but it was untenable.

The March on Washington was a March for Jobs and Freedom. There are still too many people who are unemployed or underemployed in America - they're black, white, Latino, Native American and Asian American.

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, it's time for us to take a hard look at the separate and unequal conditions that still exist in our schools and our communities and rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the promise of equal opportunity for all.

We grew up as kids watching those movies and we were exposed to themes of civil rights, unfairness, bigotry and fathers struggling against the kind of mob of the town, so you remember how you felt as a kid being taken seriously, that you are part of the human drama.

Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.

Civil rights in this country is unfinished business, and racism is alive and well.

I was doing a civil rights musical here in Los Angeles, and we sang at one of the rallies where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke, and I remember the thrill I felt when we were introduced to him. To have him shake your hand was an absolutely unforgettable experience.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it.

You could not be in the civil rights movement without having an appreciation for everybody's rights. That these rights are not divisible - not something men have and women don't and so on.

Not everyone likes sports. Gandhi and Malcolm X come to mind.

A lot of the idealism of the Sixties was spot on, from the environmentalism to the war to the Civil Rights movement, the women's rights movement, you name it.

The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.

I earned my spurs in the civil rights movement. All my life, not for political but for religious reasons, moral reasons, that's where I've been, and I'm proud of it, and I'll always be there.

Spying on our citizens? That's just wrong.

The hate directed against the colored people here in St. Louis has always given me a sad feeling because when I was a little girl I remember the horror of the East St. Louis race riot.

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.

As the daughter of a civil rights leader, I believe in the power that compels people to stand up for their freedoms, for justice and opportunity. I know that marching inspires people to take an active role in creating positive change for a better America.