Andrew Johnson Quotes

My worst preconception of their appearance and their ignorance did not fall as low as their actual stupidity ... They appear to be nothing more than moving masses of flesh unendowed with anything of intelligence above the brutes

I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.

I am acquainted with many Negro poets, contractors, labor leaders, journalists, social workers, physicians, novelists ... It does not strike me as strange that Negroes should be doing all sorts of work. But white people continue to be amazed when they hear of Negroes having such vocations, They regard successful Negroes as freaks, along with trained seals, and infant chess prodigies. .

In the combat between the emerging Negroes of the South and the ruling white trash, I sympathize greatly with the Negro.

If white America is ready to extend complete democratic rights to colored people, there will be no race, no racial tension and no racial prejudice on either side, but we can be sure that any movement 'back to normalcy' in race relations will be bitterly resisted by colored people. It is now up to white America to make its choice...

I don't think that the country is ever ready to have the conversation about race.

If black or red skins or any other skin of color is disgraceful to God, it appears that he has disgraced himself a great deal—for he has made fifteen colored people to one white and placed them here upon this earth.

…separation was in everyone’s best interest…blacks would find happier homes in other lands.

He was murdered by every member of the gospel who has remained silent about racial discrimination—who has hidden behind the stained glass windows of his church.. He was murdered by every Negro who accepted segregation.

For all Sunday’s denouncing of sins, he never mentioned rotten, stinking, hell-born race prejudice. It is pitiable when we think of the thousands of white men in this country, claiming to be ministers of the gospel,—claiming to be ambassadors of God, representatives of Jesus Christ; and yet sitting down quietly in the midst of this spreading leprosy of race prejudice, and doing nothing to stay its ravages, content to have it spread, and to curse, as it is doing, both races,—embittering the Negro and debasing the white man.

For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,) the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the American population. They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes. Here they are, four millions of them, and, for weal or for woe, here they must remain.

This year Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States; and then the war clouds began to gather dark and heavy. The colored people were watched almost with sleepless vigilance.

There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us ... Even when you cease to be slaves, you are far removed from being placed on an equality with the white man ... I cannot alter it if I would. It is a fact

Our leader will not be a white man with a Black heart, nor a Black man with a white heart, but a Black man with a Black heart.

There are still some black youth growing up in ghettoes in this country who will never know a white person—not even speak to one.

Majority rule is not the norm for solving issues or problems.

To be American in the United States means to be white, protestant, and very rich. This excludes almost entirely black people and anyone else who can be easily identified.

I spent 23 days in jail—two days longer than a man who killed his wife.

For people who have been slaves for 150 years doing all the work to be called lazy and shiftless by the man who was sitting on the porch—that is a phenomenon in itself.

Busing has only achieved white flight.

Negroes are almost too ignorant to eat, scarcely wise enough to breathe, mere existing human machines.

I am for the negro against the crocodile, but for the white man against the negro.

In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but what will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any country.... I think it, however, a greater evil to the white than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former.

There is an unwillingness on the part of our people for you free colored people to remain with us. Whether it is right or wrong I do not propose to discuss, but to propose it as a fact with which we have to deal. It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.

The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience