Bernie Sanders Quotes

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

What I did at Ole Miss had nothing to do with going to classes. My objective was to destroy the system of white supremacy.

Had it not been for James Meredith, who was willing to risk his life, the University of Mississippi would still be all white.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

I wrote a great deal about the Civil Rights Movement when I was writing for 'The Nation' in the '60s, and also for Esquire magazine. Reading the biography of Coffin, it just reminded me that in those days, when you saw the term 'Christian,' it usually meant people for civil rights and for justice.

If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement made demands that altered the course of American lives and backed up those demands with the willingness to give up your life in service of your civil rights, with Black Lives Matter, a more internalized change is being asked for: recognition.

The March on Washington was not a climax but a new beginning.

The Civil Rights Movement is in transition from protest to politics, and in politics compromise is necessary.

When you live in the South, you're constantly part of the civil rights movement.

These people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education and now we've got these knuckleheads walking round.

LISTEN: If you ever wondered what you would do if you were alive in the Civil Rights Movement, NOW IS THE TIME to find out. NOW. RIGHT NOW.

I was in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants and movie houses in the '60s.

I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a lawsuit. It would do the cause much good. Let us banish fear. We have been in this mental state for three centuries. I am a radical. I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me.

I watched a documentary about Freedom Riders. One young woman told her parents, 'I'm going to leave college to ride and represent the future.' I thought, 'Who would do that now?' Who would do that for my son?"

A little old lady sitting at the front of the bus can do nothing to change civil rights.

These people in Mississippi State, they are not "down"; all they need is a chance. And I am determined to give my part not for what the Movement can do for me, but what I can do for the Movement to bring about a change in the State of Mississippi.

The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.

What Martin Luther King is doing is disarming the black people of America of their God-given right and of their natural right.

Ajamu Baraka comes out of the tradition of the African-American intellectuals, the people who really been standing up for African-American rights and economic rights and workers rights.

The sixties were a time when ordinary people could do extraordinary things . . . !

The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.

When the students in the South, the blacks, started demonstrating, that was the beginning of the time of students becoming a social force around the world.

That was exciting to be able to comment on civil rights. I mean, the civil rights movement that young people don't know about today, but Martin Luther King was considered by the establishment press in the early years of the sit-in movement as a dangerous man, and he was the equivalent at that time as Malcolm X. And he was told to stop his demonstrations; they were against the law and all of that. Now that he's sainted and sanctified we've forgotten.

The Civil Rights Movement, it wasn't just a couple of, you know, superstars like Martin Luther King. It was thousands and thousands - millions, I should say - of people taking risks, becoming leaders in their community.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.