Michelle Alexander Quotes

The reason I namecheck restorative justice so much is because that, to me, is the utopia.

When you're fighting for civil rights, it's sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Civil rights are an evolution; and you have to bring people along.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

I have loved the Department of Justice ever since, as a young boy, I watched Robert Kennedy prove during the Civil Rights Movement how the department can - and must - always be a force for that which is right.

Is Justice to be established by subjecting half of mankind to the will of the other half? Justice, Sir, is blind to colors, and weighs in equal scales the rights of all men whether white or black…. An opportunity is now presented, if not to diminish, at least to prevent the growth of a sin that sits heavy on the soul of every one of us.

It is fast approaching when the United States shall no longer be stained with this foul pollution of slavery.

While it is admitted that each State in which slavery exists has by the Constitution of the United States the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its abolition with in its own boundaries; this Society shall endeavor to convince their fellow citizens that slaveholding is a heinous sin in the sight of God. and that the duty, safety and best interests of all concerned require its immediate abandonment without expatriation.

The state should look into this, as other nations do: see to it that nobles do not take the lives of their subjects at will, or burden them with unjust toil - as if they were dumb cattle!

The abolition of slavery and the long effort to improve the status of women owe more to Britain and other democracies than to the United States, where progress on both areas trailed many other countries. Nor can the United States claim a global leadership role today on gay rights, criminal justice, or economic equality—Europe’s got those areas covered.

If we have to build more prisons, it means we have failed.

I believe this system of mass incarceration would have Dr. King turning in his grave. There's no doubt in my mind that Dr. King would be doing everything in his power to build a movement to end mass incarceration in the United States; a movement for education, not incarceration.

Saying 'black lives matter' both literally and figuratively restores people's dignity.

Reparative justice is not about black people standing on the street corners expecting charities from white folks. This is about building of bridges across lines of moral justice.

We seek a restorative justice, not a retributive justice.

The idea of justice - even just dreaming of justice - is revolutionary. The language of human rights tends to accept a status quo that is intrinsically unjust - and then tries to make it more accountable.

The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute.

At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.

Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims.

Unless we maintain correctional institutions of such character that they create respect for law and government instead of breeding resentment and a desire for revenge, we are meeting lawlessness with stupidity and making a travesty of justice.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

I think that the negro should reserve the right to execute.

Peace without Justice is a low estate,— A coward cringing to an iron Fate! But Peace through Justice is the great ideal,— We'll pay the price of war to make it real.

The day is not distant when we must bear and adopt [the abolition of slavery], or worse will follow.

justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.

A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I'm saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!"