John Lewis Quotes

Fortunately, the leadership of black immigrant communities has always been present in all black liberation movements from leaders like Marcus Garvey to Shirley Chisholm to Malcolm X and Harry Belafonte. We know this is our legacy.

In 1957, when I was in second grade, black children integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched it on TV. All of us watched it. I don't mean Mama and Daddy and Rocky. I mean all the colored people in America watched it, together, with one set of eyes.

I was raised in Arizona, and I went to public school, and the extent of my knowledge of the civil-rights movement was the story of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder how much my generation knows.

The fact that we elected Obama was a sign that the black struggle inherent in the blues and so much of the music I have loved can triumph.

I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.

As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option.

These young people have to know that Dr. King and others made it possible for them to do their Hip Hopping.

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.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Negro President

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued 90 years ago. I believe in gradualism. But 90 years is gradual enough.

Women were really the backbone of the civil rights movement, although the leadership was predominantly male. At the rallies, the audience was women and children. The platform was predominantly men.

Nobody really loves America more than black Americans, because black Americans loved America even when America didn’t love us back

Reading the Martin Luther King story, that little comic book, set me on the path that I'm on today.

Early on, I wrote a letter to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was 17. I felt called, moved.

You can't separate the phenomenal birth of unionism in the United States of America from the Pullman porters. This same small group of men, who grew to be 10,000 strong, was also the organizational foundation for the civil rights movement and all of the gains that were made in the '40s and the '50s. That, and the black church.

The walk from Selma to Montgomery that turned into Bloody Sunday leaves us with a strong reminder of how much those before us gave for basic human rights.

I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement.

My mom, Clida, taught my four brothers and me about her father's work to organize black voters in rural Louisiana in the 1950s. We carried her dad's legacy of activism with us. The Civil Rights Movement was present in the daily life of my family in Detroit in the 1970s.

I think if people really read Martin Luther King, Jr., then they would begin to understand what he really represented.

I've always had sort of an interest in American history, full stop, and especially people who contributed to the civil rights struggle.

My black hero is and always will be Martin Luther King, not just because of the strength of his oratory but because his vision was very much the reality that I'd come to take for granted.

I don't remember when I didn't know about Martin Luther King.

I grew up reading Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.