Quotes about Racism
The slaveholders of America had devised with almost scientific precision their systems for keeping the Negro defenseless, emotionally and physically.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In short, the Negroes' problem cannot be solved unless the whole of American society takes a new turn toward greater economic justice.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishing of a segregated society. They segregated Southern money from the poor whites; they segregated Southern churches from Christianity; they segregated Southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
agree with the President's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders that our nation is splitting into two hostile societies and that the chief destructive cutting edge is white racism.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In Mississippi the murder of civil rights workers is still a popular pastime. In that state more than forty Negroes and whites have either been lynched or murdered over the last three years, and not a single man has been punished for these crimes. More than fifty Negro churches have been burned or bombed in Mississippi in the last two years, yet the bombers still walk the streets
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
If Western civilization does not now respond constructively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Why does misery constantly haunt the Negro?
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow, so that when he had no money for food, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.