Manning Marable Quotes

Had it not been for James Meredith, who was willing to risk his life, the University of Mississippi would still be all white.

Malcolm X had a clear vision and an understanding that we were - that he was a part of a broad freedom struggle.

The civil rights movement would experience many important victories, but Rosa Parks will always be remembered as its catalyst.

If they had not murdered Malcolm X, there probably never would have been a Black Panther Party.

If you blink, you will miss me, but I am in 'Malcolm X.'

Martin Luther King told American Blacks not to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

In the Fifties, there were certain places we couldn't ride on the bus, and now there is a possibility of a black man being in the White House. You have to feel good about it.

I identify... with the ideas that Malcolm X stood for.

Through protest - especially in the 1950s and '60s - we, as a people, touched greatness. Protest, not immigration, was our way into the American Dream. Freedom in this country had always been relative to race, and it was black protest that made freedom an absolute.

I grew up reading Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a revolutionary, simple and plain.

When I began my political career, I identified with Malcolm X.

I once did a - the first piece on Malcolm X that anyone had ever seen in the - white press.

What is accurately portrayed is the rich humanity not just of Martin Luther King but of the movement, which was a multiracial movement. You had blacks and whites coming together and sacrificing, organizing and mobilizing the world. That's the first time we've had collective action put at the center of any kind of portrayal of Martin King on the screen.

I heard of Martin Luther King Jr. when I was 15 years old. I heard of Rosa Parks. And I met Dr. King in 1958 at the age of 18. I met Rosa Parks ... But to pick up a fun comic book - some people used to call them "funny books" - to pick this little book up, it sold for 10 cents, 12 pages or 14 pages? 14 pages I digested. And it inspired me. And I said to myself, "If the people of Montgomery can do this, maybe I can do something. Maybe I can make a contribution."

We're primarily interested in solving the problem of 20 million black people. And if integration is going to solve the problem tomorrow, then let's integrate. But since the Supreme Court issued its desegregation decision seven years ago, and you only have about six or seven percent integration now, on an educational level, that means that the black man trying to use integration as a means of solving his problem will be another 100 years just getting integration on an educational level.

I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.

My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" - one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

If the Negro is to achieve the goal of integration, he must organize himself into a militant and nonviolent mass movement.

Either Malcolm X or Martin [Luther King] could have played the role of a unifier, but it was - Malcolm as long as he remained within the Nation of Islam, talking to the converted, he did not represent a fundamental threat to the American government.

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.

Abraham Lincoln freed the black man. In many ways, Dr. King freed the white man. How did he accomplish this tremendous feat? Where others - white and black - preached hatred, he taught the principles of love and nonviolence.

It's not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it's the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.