Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to people of white skin.... The more I feel like an American, the more the situation pains me.

What happens to Black Folks today, happens to White Folks tomorrow.

I'm sick and tired of black and white people of good intent giving aspirin to a society that is dying of a cancerous disease.

I cannot face my God much longer knowing that his black creatures are held separate and distinct from his white creatures in the game that has given me all that I can call my own.

The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down.

Not a state within a state, but the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is, is saying that the black man, since the white man, has found it impossible to bring about integration, other than toke on a ta - other than on a token basis, and which proves that the, the two of us, the ex-slave and the master, can't live in the same house as equals.

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State.

The myth of integration as propounded under the banner of the liberal ideology must be cracked because it makes people believe that something is being achieved when in reality the artificially integrated circles are a soporfic to the blacks while salving the consciences of the few guilt-stricken whites.

Well, the white race in America is the same way. As individuals it is impossible for them to escape the collective crime committed against the Negroes in this country, collectively.

You can tell this by the program the federal government had to train 2,400 tractor drivers. They would have trained Negro and white together, but this man, Congressman Jamie Whitten, voted against it and everything that was decent. So, we've got to have somebody in Washington who is concerned about the people of Mississippi.

I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

Racism in America absolutely exists - it is an issue. We need to fix it. We're a great country - probably the greatest country but we could be a hell of a lot greater.

It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens.

The fallout from slavery is ongoing. I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

The Negro who experiences bitter and agonizing circumstances as a result of some ungodly white person is tempted to look upon all white persons as evil, if he fails to look beyond his circumstances. But the minute he looks beyond his circumstances and sees the whole of the situation, he discovers that some of the most implacable and vehement advocates of racial equality are consecrated white persons.

Protesting the color of a man's skin is not a worthy protest.

You white folks have long been eating the white meat of the chicken. We Negroes are now ready for some of the white meat instead of the dark meat.

In America right now, the people who talk about race the most are people of color - and if we are going to move the needle forward, it's WHITE people who need to acknowledge their role in racism.

I think racial justice - and addressing the sick and enduring legacy of structural racism - remains one of the greatest challenges of our time, and one that's particularly important for more and more white people to speak up about.

I feel that the time is always right to do what is right. Where progress for the Negro in America is concerned, there is a tragic misconception of time among whites. They seem to cherish a strange, irrational notion that something in the very flow of time will cure all ills.