Angela Davis Quotes

The South actually has a very strong tradition of activism. The civil rights movement came from down here! It was black activists demanding that their voices be heard. People say these are red states. No they're not!

John Carlos provided the world with one of the most iconic images of the 1960s with his Black Power salute after a medal-winning performance at the 1968 summer games.

I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, "If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on." I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do.

What the white man in America needs to realize is there's a new thinking among black people today which makes them not willing to sit around and wait for five years to get this problem solved, much less a hundred years.

Electoral politics was always an objective of the Black Panther party, so Barack Obama is a part of what we dreamed and struggled and died for.

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.

Unless we get white people into the streets with Negroes for the march [on Washington], the fight will appear to be between white people and black and not between justice and injustice.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was more politically oriented. Part and parcel of the initial SNCC efforts was to not only go in for voter registration, but for political participation.

The so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is used as a Communist program for revolution in America.

I think at the time, my radicalization was not through growing up Chinese, but through the role that the black people were playing at the beginning of World War II, when they had started the "Double V for Victory" movement - for democracy at home as well as abroad.

I do think it's extremely important to acknowledge the gains that were made by the civil rights movement, the black power movement.Institutional transformations happened directly as a result of the movements that people, unnamed people, organized and gave their lives to.

In my political life I spoke before leftist groups, before black activist groups that I disagreed with, to explain my position and to support my legislation.

Malcolm X never renounced and never stepped away from a strong commitment to black nationalism and black self-determination. That's absolutely clear if you do any analysis of his speeches.

I was involved in the civil rights movement way back in the late '50s and through the '60s and '70s. I was doing a civil rights musical here in Los Angeles and we sang at one of the rallies where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke, and I remember the thrill I felt when we were introduced to him. To have him shake your hand was an absolutely unforgettable experience. Even before I could vote, I was involved in the political arena.

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.

I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.

There is a magnificent new militancy within the Negro community all across this nation. And I welcome this as a marvelous development. The Negro of America is saying he's determined to be free and he is militant enough to stand up.

Has he paid his dues? Is he black enough? John Lewis and I were out there marching and organizing sit-ins back in the '60s so that his children and my children would not have to do it. We would have been failures if had to do the same things we did.

Martin Luther King was only an activist for 13 years and every year he changed and every year he became more radical. By the end he was calling for revolution. People don't know this because they go to too many prayer breakfasts on his birthday.

I think you'll find also that if the negro ever realizes that he should begin to fight for real for his freedom, there are many whites who will fight on his side with him.

I also think it's crucial to convey that the [Black] Movement largely succeeded because of the unwavering dedication of young people willing to risk their comfort, their safety, their lives.

The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to stand on a balcony without getting shot still maintains its power to awe and inspire.

The Black Panther party of Self-Defense is a revolutionary party.

The Black Panther Party was not a gang. They grew out of a young black intelligentsia on college campuses.

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.