New York Times Quotes

Scarcely any subject that has to be legislated upon in civil society failed, at one time or another, to demand the action of this singular Bureau [The Freedmen’s Bureau]

No approximately correct history of civilization can ever be written which does not throw out in bold relief, as one of the great landmarks of political and social progress, the organization and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau.

The use of power to bring about radical social and political change in the 1860s carries important implications for the use of federal power to bring about change in matters of race, citizenship, and social welfare today. So long as this remains true—and there us no sign that these issues will go away any time soon.

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.

I will begin a new program to get private enterprise into the ghetto and the ghetto into private enterprise. I call it “Black Capitalism.” More black ownership of business and land and homes can be the multiplier of pride that will end our racial strife.

From 1865 to 1965, my race, the black race, was one of the most competitive, entrepreneurial, Christian, moral races in our country. We had the highest percentage of entrepreneurs in the country, the highest percentage of marriage in the country.

Well, it's the last step of the civil rights movement: You know, wrap your hands around some money, right?

In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience.

Martin Luther King took us to the mountain top: I want to take us to the bank.

Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem.

America is not perfect. It took a bloody civil war to free over 4 million African Americans who lived enslaved. It took another hundred years after that before they achieved full equality under the law.

Haiti's economy cannot be built by and benefit just a privileged few. It must be built by and benefit all Haitians.

In the summer of 1964, my sister and I went to South Ballston, Virginia, to stay with my aunt and her kids. They passed the civil rights bill that summer; my cousins were so happy because now they could swim in the pool.

I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans championed citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient for economic emancipation.

I think government has a major role to play in helping us with the pursuit of happiness.

We have been saying "Freedom" for six years. What we are going to start saying now is "Black Power". We have begged the President. We've begged the federal government. That's all we've been doing, begging and begging. From now on, when they ask you what you want, you know what to tell them.

In the drastic move from the serfdom to freedom, it is probably better for ex-slaves to be soldiers, and thus gradually learn to support themselves than to be thrown on the cold charities of the world without sympathy or assistance.

Negroes would show themselves hardy children of toil once the freedman can feel that he is a man with a home to call his own, and a family around him, a wife to protect, children to nurture and rear, wages to be earned and received, and a right to invest his savings in the land of the country.

I flatly deny that it is a civil right for a white man to marry a black woman or for a black man to marry a white woman.

LBJ’s policies were giving American blacks hope they’d never had, they found intolerable what they had once accepted as inevitable.

American women who know the history of this country will always resent the fact that American men chose to enfranchise Negroes fresh from slavery before enhancing their wives and mothers.

The best social programs we've had in this country are those that have united the middle class and the poor.

After the Civil war, everybody in retrospect claimed to be an abolitionist. It’s amazing that slavery survived so long when there were so many abolitionists.

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation; nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation.