John Marshall Harlan Quotes

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities…. This nation … will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

No man’s station, in this free country, is determined by the accident of his colour.

…I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races…nor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry

I have never contended for giving the negro equal privileges with the white man. That is a doctrine I do not advocate.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people [blacks] are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.

His aim is to place the Negroes on equality with the white man—to have him eat at the same table, sit in the same pew, and vote at the same ballot box. He would appear to forget altogether the Creator himself made a distinction when he established the immovable barrier of color between the races.

The South may well wish that there had never been a slave trade, that Yankee skippers had never brought people from Africa to this country. But they did, and the South prospered greatly from the work of these people. The colored,, built the prosperity of the South. And now, when everywhere in the world slavery is acknowledged to be wrong and full citizenship has been granted to all of our people, we should do it not only in words but in actual deeds and with our hearts.

I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.

All who abhor the immortality of discrimination and social injustice toward their fellow men must share the impatience of the nation’s Negro Americans and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in full active and affirmative support of their struggle to make a present reality out of the 100 year old Emancipation Proclamation.

In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.

It always has been, and always will be the position of The Independent that the white folks will prepare Jim Crow accommodations for Negroes just so long as the race produces a Jim Crow leadership. Men would not make cotton, corn and other commodities to sell if there was no market for them; and in like manner, the white man would not offer the Negro second class or Jim Crow accommodations if the Negro would not accept them; and the Negro may expect to be Jim Crowed, buzzard-roosted, discriminated against, kicked about, kicked off the street cars and hauled on elevators with trash and garbage, boxes and plunder, so long as he submits to such conditions and grins at the white man with his hat in his hand. The Independent is informed that Billy Sunday will preach to the Jim Crow Negroes of Atlanta in the Jim Crow meeting provided for Negroes only in his tabernacle Monday night. Now, the gospel of Jesus Christ knows no color line. It is as susceptible to the black man as the white man. Jesus died for all; not for the white folk or for the black folk, but for every man who would seek him diligently in spirit and truth; and, if Billy Sunday can’t preach to Negroes and white folks under the same tent, at the same time, then he ought not to preach to either

I am not ... in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them ... to intermarry with white people.

Many persons who say that they favor economic, political, and educational equality for the Negro oppose such equality in practice for fear that it will lead to 'social equality,' by which most of them mean intermarriage.

There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us ... Even when you cease to be slaves, you are far removed from being placed on an equality with the white man ... I cannot alter it if I would. It is a fact

If the power exists in the present case it cannot be restricted to this alone. The Committee may distribute all the children into classes, according to mere discretion. They may establish a separate school for Irish or Germans… They may separate Catholics from Protestants … separate different sects of Protestants … establish a separate school for the rich, that the delicate taste of this favored class may not be offended by the humble garments of the poor … All this, and much more, can be done in the exercise of that high-handed power which makes a discrimination on account of race or color

I rejoice that I have lived to see this day, when the colored people of this favored land, by law, have equal privileges with the most favored. And I have faith to believe that ere long equal justice will be granted to the poor Indians and the Chinese.

By 'Freedom' for Negroes, I meant and still mean, full economic, political and Social equality with American citizens, in thought, expression and action, with no discrimination based on race or color.

The Negro people of America... have cut our forests, tilled our fields, built our railroads, fought our battles, and in all of their trials they have manifested a simple faith, a grateful heart, a cheerful spirit, and an undivided loyalty. Now they have come to the place where their faith can no longer feed on the bread of repression and violence. They ask for the bread of liberty, of public equality, and public responsibility. It must not be denied them.

Southern attempts to deny blacks equal rights were turning the Constitution into a sublime and beautiful scripture—into a horrid charter of wrong.

In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington.

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

For black people the war [WWII] provided an opportunity to accelerate their demands for equality…. Black Americans highlighted the distance between this ideal of America and the reality of ongoing racial inequality, often through the black press and civil rights organizations

… the color of the skin is a condition entirely to be disregarded … I have little patience with … any other tests than those of regularity, character, manhood, and intelligence.

The Founding Fathers made no reference either to the Negro, the savage Indians, the Feejee, the Malay or any other degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men.