Civil Rights Quotes - Page 26

• Silver rights aren't as dramatic and captivating as civil rights. The movement isn't good TV and it's boring or inaccessible to many people. The forums were created to spread awareness, dialogue, and community to forge new partnerships and ideas.

  John Hope Bryant

  Ideas, Rights, People

  Source: www.ebony.com

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• Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing. I answered an ad that the Presbyterian Church of Chicago put up on college campuses. I was at the University of Kansas, and it's somewhat relevant to my life and work that I'm a Jew. But they weren't doing a religious litmus test. They wanted energetic, civil-rights-committed college students to come help them run some summer programs.

  Sara Paretsky

  Summer, Running, Religious

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• This was a very progressive group of clergy who foresaw the race riots that were going to take place when Dr. King started helping the local civil rights community push for open housing. They were sort of hoping against hope that we could educate kids in a way that could counter some of the racist messages they were imbibing at home. I don't know whether we did any good, but it changed my life in every single way.

  Sara Paretsky

  Kings, Home, Kids

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• I had a fantasy as a child that I might be a writer someday. I always thought that meant you went to New York or Paris. But after that intense summer, I never thought that I wanted to live any place but Chicago. It also made me see what the stakes were in the civil rights movement. And it made me see what real hatred was like and the forms that it took. But it also made me understand how powerless ordinary people feel in their lives.

  Sara Paretsky

  Summer, New York, Children

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• The next step has to be the necessary step. It's always to put the immigrant community and the civil rights movement ahead of partisan politics.

  Luis Gutierrez

  Rights, Community, Next Steps

  "Immigration Battle". "FRONTLINE", www.pbs.org. October 20, 2015.

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• Well, here you had a city that was selling more cars than ever before, that had this wondrous music being created, that was so vital to the labor and civil rights of this country, and yet it was dying and didn't see it, except for some sociologist at Wayne State University who predicted that Detroit was losing population by a half-million by the end of that '60s decade, and that that trend would continue taking away its tax base.

  David Maraniss

  Country, Rights, Cities

  "Super Bowl Commercial Inspires Maraniss To Write About Detroit's Better Times". "Morning Edition" with David Greene, www.npr.org. January 14, 2016.

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• It was so crucial to the Civil Rights Movement that on June 23, 1963, Martin Luther King came to town, walked down Woodward Avenue with more than 100,000 people and delivered the first major public iteration of his "I Have A Dream" speech, two months before he did it in Washington.

  David Maraniss

  Dream, Kings, June

  "Super Bowl Commercial Inspires Maraniss To Write About Detroit's Better Times". "Morning Edition" with David Greene, www.npr.org. January 14, 2016.

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• There are still civil rights issues. There are still people who can't be visited by their spouse in the hospital because they're gay. These are humanitarian issues. At the end of the day, all you want is for people to be happy in the pursuit of life, love and liberty.

  Brandi Carlile

  Love Life, Gay, Issues

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• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society.

  Aberjhani

  Rights, Voting, Foundation

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• The government has created a nation of paper criminals. People can be put in jail and lose civil rights and liberties through bureaucratic procedures.The only thing that is keeping you out of jail is government goodwill.

  Ayn Rand

  Jail, Rights, Government

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• The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.

  John F. Kennedy

  Rights, Thank God, Movement

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• Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

  Derrick Bell

  Rights, Ready

  Derrick Bell (2008). “Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence Of Racism”, p.4, Basic Books

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• This bill attempts to make sure that President Clinton is not allowed to do by Executive Order what Congress has declined to enact in the past two congressional sessions namely, to treat homosexuals as a special class protected under various titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  Jesse Helms

  Past, Rights, Order

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• So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and human beings. And that is a deep moral and spiritual issue, which can of course be backed up by Civil Rights Commissions which enforce the laws against any form of discrimination.

  Cornel West

  Spiritual, Law, Issues

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• I think the authors of that notable instrument [the Declaration of Independence] intended to include all men.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Men, Thinking, Equality

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• The suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Taken, Party, Responsibility

  Letter to Charles F. Gardner, August 9, 1924.

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• In your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Sex, Rights, Government

  "An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting: At the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872" by Susan B. Anthony, Rochester N.Y.: Daily democrat & chronicle book print, 1874.

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• There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for theother fellow to make the first move--and he, in turn, waits for you. The minute a person whose word means a great deal dares to take the open- hearted and courageous way, many others follow. Not everyone can be turned aside from meanness and hatred, but the great majority of Americans is heading in that direction. I have a great belief in the future of my people and my country.

  Marian Anderson

  Country, Moving, Heart

  Marian Anderson (1956). “My Lord, what a Morning: An Autobiography”, p.312, University of Illinois Press

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• It iscrucial that we understand lesbian/feminism in the deepest, most radical sense: as that love for ourselves and other women, that commitment to the freedom of all of us, which transcends the category of "sexual preference" and the issue of civil rights, to become a politics of asking women's questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women--not a chosen few--shall be honored and validated in every respect of culture.

  Adrienne Rich

  Integrity, Commitment, Issues

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• ...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source].

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Children, Struggle, Mean

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• Finally and long overdue, your people, oppressed and disgraced by hatred and maliciousness, have achieved justice: now you enjoy full citizen's rights, but you'll remain Jews nonetheless.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Rights, People, Justice

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• Two soldiers and a villain are enough to blow up the rights of the citizens.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Blow, Rights, Two

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• Today's secular libertarians, who want to remove biblical religion from public life, have trouble making sense of the civil rights movement because it was so clearly a religiously inspired movement that entered the public arena and made a major difference in American life.

  Bruce L. Shelley

  Christian, Religious, Biblical

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• For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp.

  Joe Klein

  Baby, War, Past

  "Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense" by Joe Klein, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 4, 2009.

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• A lot of people criticized me for speaking out, not long ago, about gay marriage. I could not remain silent any longer. It's the civil rights of our day. It's the issue of our day.

  Joe Biden

  Leadership, Gay, Rights

  "Biden dots speech with '16 themes" by Alexander Burns, www.politico.com. September 15, 2013.

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