James Farmer Quotes

I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.

It is an insult for me to have been alive through the times you are calling the so-called civil rights movement. I don't celebrate my humiliations and my insults.

The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.

My earliest memories are of the civil rights era. My earliest experiences were rage.

We may very well be making history here ... in the presence of the man who is entrusted with the banner of American liberty that was taken from Lincoln when he was shot 95 years ago … Dr. King was almost stabbed to death, has been shot at, has been arrested more often than anybody in the United States, south and north … Dr. King’s life at this moment is in just as great danger as was Lincoln’s. And he has to walk with care if he is to continue to lead this crusade

I’ve never been involved in a Civil Rights campaign that was not ill-timed

My wife and I went to jail in Selma. The difference when I was back there recently? White folks? No. Black folks who were not scared. I was behind the president this time. When I was a little boy and ran around with trifling dudes, I was the only one scared of dogs. And I was bitten 14 times! Dogs smell scared. And that's the same thing with people: 50 years ago they smelled fear. There was no fear this time.

I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late '40's and early '50's was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival.

The goal of Dr. Martin Luther King is to give Negroes a chance to sit in a segregated restaurant beside the same white man who had brutalized them for 400 years.

One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Ganhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes.

I have suffered as much as Martin Luther King. Only I didn't get the bullet. And I would have taken the bullet if I could have.

Bobby Darin was one of the first to take black musicians on the road with his band, and there were places that didn't want him to play, and he stood up to it.

Look at the Civil Rights Movement. Look at any kind of fight for change. People had to keep fighting and taking their rights. Rights are never given to you. They have to be fought for and they have to be taken.

Well, I've been politically involved for a really long time. Growing up in the segregated South, it was a very painful experience for me to live through the open racism of the time.

Even after facing jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. courageously and boldly spoke out against racial inequality.

When people discuss the 1960s and the great Civil Rights Era, they often speak in romantic terms as if there wasn't immense work put in, and as if there wasn't immense sacrifice that took place. But none of those battles were easily fought and won; there were sustained movements behind them.

You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.

The fire trucks are out, there are thousands of people in the streets. You have a choice. You can have this, or you let Negroes eat at the lunch counters.

When I wrote the song, The Way It Is, I wanted to move people to take a stand on civil rights in this country.

One can cite cases of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists.

I'm looking to be shot any time I step out of my car ... If I die, it will be in a good cause. I've been fighting for America just as much as the soldiers in Vietnam.

The two things I feared as a boy most were rattlesnakes and white people.

The racists have their own movement, it is the NAACP.

We gathered for the purpose of neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.

We will have demonstrations until the injustices that have caused them are eliminated.