Eugene V. Debs Quotes
I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. If it had not been for the men and women who, in the past, have had the moral courage to go to jail, we would still be in the jungles.
Eugene V. Debs, 1855-1926, Socialist Party Candidate for President, Founder, American Railway Union, Attributed
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
His strategy was to fill the jails of Birmingham, and asked the young people to help. The next days saw virtually all the Birmingham high school students our of school and in the streets protesting which was then against the un-Constitutional laws of Birmingham and Alabama. The students were arrested by the droves and the white authorities, believing that they were being firm against “radical lawbreakers”, fell into the trap, and became a travesty to most of the country and the rest of the world and the hundreds of jailed students beaten and assaulted raised the consciousness of whites as well as Blacks.
25 of the Union’s TWA Airline Workers in Memphis Tennessee had signed a petition to the Union objecting to the Union’s support for King’s desegregation campaign. Quill responded by inviting King to give the main address at the annual union convention. He was prophetic of the danger King faced, but died before King was assassinated.
Chavez had been fasting in protest and was too weak to speak when Kennedy visited.
Christians at the time were the revolutionaries of society and formed secret societies it worship and further their religion. Once Christianity was the established religion, then secret societies were suspect of not treasonous per se.
There was a March on Washington planned for 1942. However, the leaders were persuaded to call it off as the United States was in the midst of the Second World War. The military was segregated and so were the defense plants. FDR made some concessions regarding defense jobs but discrimination was still rampant. It would be 20 years later when the March actually took place with some of the same leaders organizing it.
Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) ("Wobblies") and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his presidential candidacies as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.
