Morgan Freeman Quotes

If we could create the conditions that make racism difficult, or discourage it, then there would be less stress and less need for affirmative action programs. One of those conditions would be an economic policy that would create tight labor markets over long periods of time. Now does that mean that affirmative action is here only temporarily? I think the ultimate goal should be to remove it.

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.

Some people would view Jackie Robinson as a very safe African-American, a docile figure who had a tendency to try to get along with everyone, and when you look at his history, you learn that he has this fire that allows him to take this punishment but also figure out savvy ways of giving it back.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

In '42,' it's like the '40s where racial equality had come into the consciousness of a lot of people, whereas in the 1900s it was sort of a new thing.

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

Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

America faces a new race that has awakened.

We've begun to put fear into those whites who think they can do anything they want to a black person and get away with it.

The promise of Obama's presidency, in many people's minds, is partly that America will move toward becoming a post-racial society. It's pretty clear, though, that we aren't there yet.

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

What worries me is that 'post-racial' America is not that different from the Americas that have preceded us, and it might not ever be.

The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.

It's hard to say when or if we will actually arrive at that place called 'post-racial', or, better yet, post-racism.

The Negro fought in the war, and … he’s not gonna keep taking the shit we’re dishing out. We’re in a race with time. If we don’t act, we’re gonna have blood in the streets.

The excitement during this protracted debate has been intense. The galleries are now crowded with colored persons almost to the exclusion of whites…. They know it to be a question of servitude or freedom, and imagine that the result will immediately affect their condition.

White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.

Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson understood that the South would continue to be an outcast unless it abandoned folkways that were injurious—to whites as well as blacks—and they employed the powers of the state to coerce recalcitrants into new patterns of behavior.

The Problem We All Live With

We never discuss race until something bad happens.

Our duty is to fight! Then we can adjust the problems that remain in the life of the colored man.

Some of my best friends are white.

Racism was once just racism, a terrible bigotry that people nevertheless learned to live with, if not as a necessary evil then as an inevitable one. But the civil-rights movement, along with independence movements around the world, changed that.

Jesse Jackson is not anti-Semitic, but in politics, you always get in trouble when you try to be cute.