Civil Rights Movement Quotes - Page 9

• My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.

  Janis Ian

  Rights, Parent, Movement

  "Janis Ian's Controversial 'Society's Child'". "News and Notes" with Tony Cox, www.npr.org. March 2, 2009.

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• Obama has little or nothing to do with the civil-rights movement. His roots are in Kenya, and he is shaped far more by anti-colonialism than by anything that Martin Luther King said or did.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Kings, Rights, Roots

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• John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.

  Russell Banks

  War, Rights, Political

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• In every aspect and among almost every demographic, how American society digested and processed the long, dark chapter between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the civil rights movement has been delusion.

  Douglas A. Blackmon

  War, Dark, Rights

  Douglas A. Blackmon (2009). “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II”, p.394, Anchor

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• LISTEN: If you ever wondered what you would do if you were alive in the Civil Rights Movement, NOW IS THE TIME to find out. NOW. RIGHT NOW.

  Shaun King

  Rights, Movement, Alive

  "The Amazing Black Activists We’re Thankful For in 2015" By Zeba Blay, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 23, 2015.

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• Mrs. Parks was a shy, soft spoken woman who was uncomfortable being revered as a symbol of the civil rights movement. She only hoped to inspire young people to achieve great things.

  Jim Costa

  Moving, Rights, People

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• For black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals to support the racist practices of the University of Michigan amounts to no less than a gross betrayal of the civil rights principles of our historic struggle from slavery to the final guarantee of constitutional rights to all Americans. Indeed, it was practices like those of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement.

  Walter E. Williams

  Betrayal, Struggle, Rights

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• Karen Russell learned to think from her father, someone Peter Gammons knows well, Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell, who used his prominence to support Martin Luther King Jr., to support the civil rights movement, and other important work, including work in Africa throughout his career. And Bill Russell is still at it.

  Donald Trump

  Kings, Father, Thinking

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• When I was trained as a journalist, as a race-relations reporter in Nashville covering the end of the civil-rights movement, we were strictly forbidden to use the first-person pronoun. There was kind of an electric charge around it. To come out from hiding and use the word 'I' carried a lot of fright for me.

  Lawrence Wright

  Nashville, Rights, Race

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• What is interesting is that John Lewis actually got interested initially in the civil rights movement because of a comic book. So part of it, he's paying homage to this tradition that you can tell serious stories and talk about serious issues in graphic form.

  Daniel H. Pink

  Book, Interesting, Civil Rights

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• There has to be spiritual transformation among the masses, who have to be willing to recognize that their oppression is not a law of nature. That's what Latin American bishops were doing when they formed base communities. They were trying to get peasants to recognize that you can take your fate into your own hands. That's what the civil-rights movement did here. That's what the women's movement did.

  Noam Chomsky

  Spiritual, Latin, Fate

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I've been there for so many crossroads in American history. My whole political life spans the birth of the environmental movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, putting an end to unjust wars, and so and so.

  Barbara Boxer

  War, Rights, Political

  Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

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• I'm one of the people who believes that our losses were greater than our gains. Because before the Civil Rights movement we had entrepreneurship in the black community. Right now, in Harlem, if I wanted to get a shoe repaired, I would have a hard time finding a black shoe repairman. On near about every third corner, you could find a decent black barber, decent black laundry, had restaurants in the neighborhood that were open 24 hours. The food was good at 3 o'clock in the morning as at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

  John Henrik Clarke

  Morning, Believe, Loss

  Source: www.ourtimepress.com

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• When I began writing poems, it was in the late 60s and early 70s when the literary and cultural atmosphere was very much affected by what was going on in the world, which was, in succession, the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the women's movement in the 60s, 70s, and into the early 80s. And all of those things affected me and affected my thinking, particularly the Vietnam War.

  Robert Hass

  War, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I sound like a church nut, but look at the role of the churches in the civil rights movement in the States. People are brought together in other ways that can become drivers of change.

  Duncan Green

  Rights, Nuts, People

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• I was from my little perch in a prep school I saw the civil rights movement and it was defining the moral dimensions of the time and I was drawn to it and I read James Baldwin and read Invisible Man and these were my touch points. But it was when I got to Michigan and saw a bigger world, a real world, that I got involved.

  Bill Ayers

  Real, School, Men

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• You probably know the name of Rosa Parks. You probably know that her refusal to move to the colored section in the back of a city bus sparked the Montgomery bus boycotts, one of the pivotal moments in the American civil rights movement.

  Michel Martin

  Moving, Cities, Names

  Source: www.npr.org

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• We probably have, right now, after the Civil Rights movement - and this was very unfortunate - the most glaring time of giving up on Africa, saying we're Americans. We are Americans. I'm not arguing that point. So are the Italians. So are the Germans. So are the Jews. We're Americans with an historical geography of origins outside of the United States as all people, maybe except the indigenous Americans who came here so long ago, who have generations of people whose historical origins are right here but whose initial historical origins are somewhere in Asia.

  John Henrik Clarke

  Giving Up, Rights, Long Ago

  Source: www.ourtimepress.com

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• Martin Luther King's 1963 'I have a dream' speech was a thrilling milestone in the civil rights movement, so enduring that we tend to attribute its searing power to a kind of magic. But Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on its significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes--the thought and preparation, vision and revision--whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Dream, Kings, Rights

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• Generally, the arguments for same-sex marriage go along these lines: 'I have a civil right.' What the homosexual movement wants to do is to hitch their agenda to the civil rights movement, but I point out that this is illegitimate for a number of reasons. Number one, no black person has ever left his black-ness or changed his black-ness, but plenty of people have come out of the homosexual movement. What we need to do is distinguish between race and behavior.

  Erwin W. Lutzer

  Sex, Numbers, Rights

  Source: www1.cbn.com

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• There's good reason to be excited. You have the first woman running who is qualified, and a very attractive African-American who has demonstrated crossover appeal. I got involved in politics 40 years ago during the civil rights movement, so yes, it's an exciting thing.

  Joe Biden

  Running, Rights, Years

  "Biden officially running for president". MSNBC.com, January 31, 2007.

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• I think what it was about was the people's right to vote and have those votes counted. And if you think back through our history, an awful lot of what we've fought over, struggled for, is the right of people to vote. That's what the civil-rights movement was, at its bottom, about. At the fundamental level, democracy means a government in which the people vote.

  David Boies

  Mean, Thinking, Rights

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• When Congress gets through investigating Attorney General Janet Reno, will her agency become known as the Obstruction of Justice Department? The civil rights movement was one of the great moral crusades in the first half of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in more recent times it has become all too much like those it opposed, demanding racial double standards and even condoning verbal and violent attacks against members of other races.

  Thomas Sowell

  Agency, Rights, Race

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• Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Kings, Hate, Light

  "A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings".

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• I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.

  James Earl Jones

  New York, Army, Rights

  "James Earl Jones on Vision". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 29, 1996.

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