Joseph Le Conte Quotes

This problem, which exists because of the presence of … Negroes in this country, can be permanently solved only by the physical separation of the races or by resigning ourselves to total mongrelization resulting in the destruction of both the white and black races

If social equality should be granted and intermarriage should become a matter of individual taste, then the pride of race and the sense of blood superiority which has heretofore protected the Southern whites would be destroyed.

All that is needed to make us the finest race on Earth is to engraft upon us the negro element, which Providence has placed by our side on this continent.... The white people of America are dying for want of fresh blood ... until church and state and society recognize not only the propriety but the necessity of the marriage of white and black.... in short, until the great truth shall be declared in our public documents and announced in the messages of our Presidents, that it is desirable that the white man shall marry the black woman and the white woman the black man.

It is sometimes maintained that racial mixture is biologically undesirable. There is no evidence whatever for this view. Nor is there, apparently, any reason to think that Negroes are congenitally less intelligent than white people, but as to that it will be difficult to judge until they have equal scope and equally good social conditions.

The intellectual and moral character of the European is deteriorated by the mixture of black or red blood.

I have not been able to think out any solution of the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent, but of one thing I am sure, and that is that in as much as he is here and can neither be killed or driven away, the only wise and honorable and Christian thing is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man.

Of all the peculiar classes with which we have to deal in settling the Southern problem, [there is]--a class of white men peculiarly and intimately related to the colored class by ties of blood and kinship. I refer to a class of white men who have not hesitated to establish the relations named, by recognizing, in many instances, the offspring of their slave women as their own children

Race has no place in American life or law.

Our clear goal must be the advancement of the white race and separation of the white and black races.

The Southerner is the negro's friend, his only friend. Let no intermeddling abolitionist, no refined philosophy, dissolve this friendship.

There is no middle ground on the question of interracial marriage. A person either favors or condemns such unions. The Negroes and negrophiles in the United States today who are waging the campaign for complete racial equality must be assumed to favor the amalgamation of the races unless they have openly stated their opposition.

The negro achieves his greatest perfection, physical and moral, and also greatest longevity, in a state of slavery

Every one is a man. if you walk on two legs, you're a man. It's that simple.

The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under sanction of law.

What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? But once freed, could they be made politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit this.

The tan Everyman will be a multi-ethnic being, who will carry genes from all races of man and who, as a result of these different genes, feel no loyalty to any race. The birth of the Tan Everyman is the death of white people. The Tan Everyman beings the genocide of white people.

I want a fair housing bill. We’ve got to end this Goddamn discrimination against Negroes. Until people, whether they’re purple, brown, black, yellow, red, green, or whatever – live together, they’ll never know they have the same hopes for their children, the same fears, troubles, woes, ambitions.

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.

There is no scientific reason why there should not be intermarriage between two human beings who happen to be of different race or color …. The determination of any white person not to have children with Negro, Chinese, or Irish blood is a desire which demands respect. In like manner, the tastes of others, no matter how few or many, who disagree, demand equal respect…. The determination of any white person not to have children with Negro, Chinese, or Irish blood is a desire which demands respect. In like manner, the tastes of others, no matter how few or many, who disagree, demand equal respect.

In the matter of purely personal contacts like marriage, intimate friendships and sociable gatherings, 'equality' means the right to select one's own mates and close companions. The basis of choice may be cultured taste or vacant whim, but it is an unquestionable right so long as my free choice does not deny equal freedom on the part of others. No one can for a moment question the preference of a white man to marry a white woman or invite only white friends to dinner. But by the same token if a white Desdemona prefers a black Othello; or if Theodore Roosevelt includes among his dinner guests Booker T. Washington, their right also is undeniable and its restriction by law or custom an inadmissible infringement of civil rights.

Many persons who say that they favor economic, political, and educational equality for the Negro oppose such equality in practice for fear that it will lead to 'social equality,' by which most of them mean intermarriage.

Negro members shall be treated as white members

I have never contended for giving the negro equal privileges with the white man. That is a doctrine I do not advocate.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people [blacks] are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.

It did not improve the feeling of the defeated classes of the South to contemplate, at first, the amendments of the Constitution of the United States, which not only established the freedom of the slave, but established his citizenship beyond question, and putting into his hands the ballot, making him the political equal of his former owner. Objecting not only to the law, but to that practice under it, … the former master class became greatly exasperated, and resolving, if possible, to overcome this condition of things, organized bands of "White-liners," "Ku-Klux," and "Bull-dozers," and entered upon that systematic warfare upon Republicans, white and colored, which, resulting in violence, intimidation and murder, has necessitated the use of the army to maintain the peace, and protect the loyal people of the South against that domestic violence, which at times seemed to threaten utter destruction, interfering even with legislatures, and disturbing the operations of the Government.