Desmond Tutu Quotes
I've never doubted that apartheid - because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil - was going to bite the dust eventually.
Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. Doubleday, 1999.
Senator Glen Taylor was arrested on May 1, 1948, in Birmingham, Alabama by police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor, for attempting to use a door reserved for African Americans, rather than the whites-only door, while attempting to attend a meeting of the Southern Negro Youth Congress. He was subsequently convicted of disorderly conduct. It is hard to believe that such a thing happened in America but it did. ER was one of the few Democrats to condemn such behavior. She took a great deal of criticism from the Southern Democrats for this column. They claimed she called White Southerners “Stupid.”
For a similar sentiment, see Thurgood Marshall.
The issue of slavery which had been suppressed in Congress for the first decades of the nation broke out when Missouri statehood was considered. By previous agreement, slavery was not even discussed in Congress but the time period elapsed. Tallmadge not only proposed that no more slaves could come into Missouri {613176} but most shocking to the Southerners was that every person born in the new state would be free at the age of 25. In a generation, there would be no more slavery in Missouri and there would be no economic compensation for slave owners at all. The House of Representatives accepted the amendment, but it failed in the Senate. At that time, Senators were not elected by voters but were appointed by the state legislators and the Southern slave states had a disproportionate share of the senate from a population point of view. But what this quotation shows clearly that a majority of the country in 1819 were opposed to slavery and were willing to end it without compensation.
She was one of the first prominent white southerners to denounce racial segregation.
The reason this quotation is important, it was the first time in American history that a President had tied racial discrimination to morality. Before that other Presidents had argued against segregation on pragmatic grounds or on legal, Constitutional grounds. Kennedy’s private moral declaration had a huge impact on Black leaders throughout the country who heard about it by word of mouth. That statement forged a bond between JFK and Blacks while most whites did not see anything striking in the statement.
Desmond Mpilo Tutu OMSG CH GCStJ is a South African Anglican cleric and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was the Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.
