Nick Cannon Quotes

I often tell people I don't care whether they join the NAACP or some other group, but you better join something.

When I went to the Association [ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] I learned a few things by observation. One of the things that used to strike me was [Walter White] need to impress people, even just people who came into the office.

I feel that my father's greatest legacy was the people he inspired to get involved in public service and their communities, to join the Peace Corps, to go into space. And really that generation transformed this country in civil rights, social justice, the economy and everything.

Our democracy is not something to be taken for granted. You have to fight for it. You have to commit yourself to working for it - for the long haul.

I encourage everyone to pay attention to the issues that matter to you, from jobs and the economy, to education and our schools, to criminal justice reform. Whatever it is that you care about, make sure you use your voice.

I did become American citizen in order to vote. I lived in this country for a very long time and I finally reached the point where I thought, I'm often sticking my neck out on various issues as all human beings have a right to do.

Americans of our own time - minority and majority Americans alike - need the continued guidance that the Voting Rights Act provides. We have come a long way, but more needs to be done.

My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.

Father had notions about manhood suffrage, public schools, the education and the elevation of the masses, and the gradual emancipation of the slaves, that did not suit the uncompromising views of people in places like Richmond.

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

The right to vote with no ifs, ands, or buts, that's the key. When the Negroes get that, they'll have every politician, north and south, east and west, kissing their ass, begging for their support.

Our Ancestors prayed for 389 years to place a person of color in the White House. They led over 200 slave revolts, fought in 11 wars, one being a civil war where over 600,000 people died. Our mothers fought and were killed for women’s suffrage, our grandparents were lynched for the civil rights bill of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965…my father never had the opportunity to vote and I believe it is my sacred duty to pull the lever for every member of my family who was denied the right to vote. I will not allow narrow-minded ministers or regressive politicians the satisfaction of keeping me from my sacred right to vote to shape the future for my grandchildren.

My father told me about American democracy. And he said you have to be actively engaged in the political process to make our democracy work. So I've been doing that my entire life. Civil rights movement. The peace movement during the Vietnam conflict. The movement to get an apology and redress for Japanese-Americans.

The work of being a citizen is hard and annoying, but it can pay off.

Even though I grew up and I didn't always like getting dragged to the meetings or the rallies or the speeches, I developed a very strong respect for participating in a democratic process.

In 2013, I helped create a black-centered political will- and movement-building project called #BlackLivesMatter.

Too many people in the world associate democracy with their ability to go and buy more and more every year. I come from a country where it's much more popular to remind people that democracy is available at every income level, and this is something which you need to protect.

I want people to be able to give their voice.

The fight for democracy relies on community support.

My father acted as the Illinois Branch president of the NAACP and so we spent a lot of time in the marches and the rallies working on behalf of people of color.

I think in order to achieve real change, we as the black community need to come up with real asks and we have to determine, what do we actually want? We obviously want some social reform, on police brutality and things like that. We also need political changes. But it's more than voting. What are we as black people asking of these politicians?

Do you care about climate justice? Are you about women's rights and women's reproductive rights? Do you care about civil liberties and the Voting Rights Act? There are so many opportunities for people to go back and be inspired and plug into their own community.

If actual victims of discrimination had to wait on the NAACP to see them to justice, they would never get help.

10 years ago the black man knew what his condition was. And today, because of the world revolution that's taking place all over this earth, the black man would be fighting for what he knows is his by right, but the movement on the part of [Martin Luther] King and the others had done nothing but slow down the militancy that is inherent in the nature of the black man.