Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

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

Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.

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

I'd like to think I would have signed the Civil Rights bill and wouldn't have had any issues with it.

Essentially, Eisenhower passed on to his successors the problem of guaranteeing constitutional rights to Negro citizens.

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

Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

The New Deal ultimately undermined Jim Crow’s prospects. The very legislation embraced by Southern segregationists created at first mere chinks, then whole openings for social change that were grasped by an incipient, soon powerful, movement for equal rights for Blacks.

The civil rights fight was a very important fight.

As a child, I lived through and survived the segregated South. I sat at the back of the bus at a time when America wasn't yet as great as it could be. As a grown woman, I saw the first black president reach down a hand and touch the face of a child like I once was, lifting his eyes toward a better future.

I still remember, at the age of 12, learning that segregation had been permitted only a couple of decades before I was born and that a woman's right to vote was not even a century old. But it was great Americans who stood up, some dying for the cause, to make our country better.

I'm old enough to have lived through a time when Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and others died so people of color could vote.

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.

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

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Civil Rights Act.

Many civil rights came about, not when they were passed into law, but because the federal government did what it should and saw them enforced.

I'm a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.

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.

During the 60's, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.

There are those who say to you we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years too late.

Lincoln’s talking nigger citizenship!

Votes for women didn’t come until the 1920’s. Votes for Blacks didn’t effectively come until the 1960’s.