Quotes about Civil rights

In the 1940s, traveling for an African was a complicated process. All Africans over the age of sixteen were compelled to carry 'Native passes' issued by the Native Affairs Department and were required to show that pass to any white policeman, civil servant, or employer. Failure to do so could mean arrest, trial, a jail sentence or fine.

The sooner our society admits that the Negro Revolution is no momentary outburst soon to subside into placid passivity, the easier the future will be for us all.

The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.

Protest is OK. But protests, according to my King family legacy, should be peaceful.

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me.

On March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights activists marched in Selma, Alabama, demanding an end to racial discrimination. The demonstration was led by now-Rep. John Lewis and Hosea Williams, who worked with my father, Martin Luther King Jr.

The seminal right of the modern civil rights movement was the right to vote. My father fought so diligently for it. Certainly Congressman John Lewis and many others, Hosea Williams, fought for it as well.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass. [Said to Senator John Stennis (D-MS) during debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1957]

It will be one of the tragedies of Christian history if future historians record that at the height of the twentieth century the church was one of the greatest bulwarks of white supremacy.

Even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.