Douglas Brinkley Quotes

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

Negro President

I grew up reading Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

African American history is really American history because African Americans really helped build this country.

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.

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

The African-American experience is one of the most important threads in the American tapestry.

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

We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.

The civil rights movement would experience many important victories, but Rosa Parks will always be remembered as its catalyst.

I was raised in Arizona, and I went to public school, and the extent of my knowledge of the civil-rights movement was the story of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder how much my generation knows.

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.

Black history is American history.

I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.

When I was 15 years old in 1955, I heard of Rosa Parks. I heard the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. on our radio.

William Lloyd Garrison was up there with Frederick Douglass being thrown off trains and going through what happened in the 1960s in 1840 in Boston.

Black history is part of American history, and it should be treated as such.

The Underground Railroad, which was the first integrated civil rights movement, is a part of our history that not a lot of us know about. And it's actually a very empowering side of our history.

I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement.

I think if people really read Martin Luther King, Jr., then they would begin to understand what he really represented.

I've always had sort of an interest in American history, full stop, and especially people who contributed to the civil rights struggle.

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.

My black hero is and always will be Martin Luther King, not just because of the strength of his oratory but because his vision was very much the reality that I'd come to take for granted.

I don't remember when I didn't know about Martin Luther King.