Donna Brazile Quotes

It is over one hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The Negro people in the United States have taken plenty and they have reached a stage where they have decided that they are not going to take any more.

Black people have been fighting for basic citizenship rights since the inception of the country.

When I wrote 'The Secret Life of Bees,' I was writing about civil rights.

You go through the Civil Rights struggle, everybody knew the songs - 'We shall overcome.' Everybody would sing it. Music helped us. James Brown, 'Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud.' They helped black people figure out how to navigate what was a very treacherous place in America for them.

The time to end racial segregation in the South is upon us now.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 brought an end to the ugly Jim Crow period in American history.

Every red stripe in that flag represents the black man's blood that has been shed.

I used to say, 'We've always had integration in the South... we just want it now in the daytime.

However, while we should certainly celebrate the demise of overt official racism, we must also critically examine where we are at this historical moment, recognize the many challenges ahead and reaffirm our commitment to making Brown v. Board a reality.

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.

In the United States, the Supreme Court's decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems, was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

The first African-American leader was Dr. Martin Luther King.

I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.

I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library.

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

What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.

Jim Crow was king... and I heard a game in which Jackie Robinson was playing, and I felt pride in being alive.

Her continuity - you know, if you connect Harriet Tubman, who died in 1913, to Rosa Parks, born in 1913, you get this extraordinary spectrum of the African-American experience.

Being so closely related to the South, barbecue was part of segregation and helped defeat it.

It was to carry the American democratic journey beyond these failings that Black citizens and civil rights workers risked unemployment, violence and death.

I marched back then - I was in a civil-rights musical, Fly Blackbird, and we met Martin Luther King.

People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same.

I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.

Black history is American history.