Fannie Lou Hamer Quotes

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

Americans of our own time - minority and majority Americans alike - need the continued guidance that the Voting Rights Act provides. We have come a long way, but more needs to be done.

It takes ground activity to stimulate that Black vote.

History did not end in 1965. Largely because of the Voting Rights Act, voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers.

The larger percentage of people you have registered, the larger percentage of people you will have voting.

Americans need national voter registration reform to break down the barriers that discourage and discriminate.

Until the Negro votes on a large scale, we will have to rely more and more on mass direct action as the one realistic political weapon.

Whenever we do voter registration, we ask, 'Why haven't you voted before?' The response is often, 'No one's asked us.' It's not about telling people what to do - it's about sharing what they can do.

Registering people to vote is not partisan activity.

We'll get out the [black] vote, but we need the white vote to win.

They hustled the indifferent to the booths; they lent shawls and held babies; they carried the sick and dying to the polls on mattresses—and they won. May black shame fall upon the individual or the party who, having the trust of these women, ever betrays it.

When I ran for governor, I talked about the disenfranchisement of voters. I talked about the history that we've had. We've had a horrible history here in Virginia going back to 1901 - the poll tax, literacy tests, disenfranchisement of felons. We're one of the worst four states in America on allowing people back in with voting rights.

In 1965, the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7 was planned to dramatize to the state of Alabama and to the nation that people of color wanted to register to vote.

I'd been in jail, and I'd been beat. I had been to a voter registration workshop, you know, to - they were just training and teaching us how to register, to pass the literacy test.

I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote.

We must never stop fighting for a vision of American democracy in which we strive for and encourage the highest levels of voter turnout and participation.

It's about going to where your voters are.

If people of colour do not exercise their democratic right to vote, they will remain an invisible, voiceless, and largely ignored part of the electorate.

As Democrats, we believe in giving every eligible citizen the opportunity to vote - whether it's early because they can't take off work on Election Day or absentee because they might have plans to be out of town.

Selma helped make it possible for hundreds and thousands of people in the South to become registered voters and encouraged people all across America to become participants in a democratic process.

We want to get people of color out to vote, because their vote matters. Every politician tries to capture it. But it's More Than a Vote because we want to come up with what's our ask, and hold these politicians' feet to the fire to make real change.

We have to continue to raise awareness as the Voting Rights Caucus... make sure people call into their state legislators. Let us know that they've decided they weren't going to vote because they heard it was a hassle.

I'm going to continue to do the work we're doing on voter suppression, supporting the work that's being done by Fair Count, ensuring a fair Census count.

I grew up hearing my parents' stories about how they had to fight for their right to vote in the Jim Crow South.

They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.