Stephen Douglas Quotes

When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.

The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.

Abolish lynching

The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.

Mrs. Roosevelt has gone so far in aiding the campaign for complete social equality that she has, in effect, endorsed intermarriage. She thinks marriage between whites and Negroes is an individual matter since it is a very personal problem. The unanimous condemnation of the Southland came down upon her.

The American demands of the Negro are there, made in the American manner, rooted in the American ideal. They are not to be brushed aside, and something more than fulmination and bluster is indicated from the opposition. The next move is up to white Americans, and particularly white Southern Americans.

The author of the Declaration of Independence and his associates declared equal rights impracticable in society constituted of masses of different races

… an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world's mockery…. the government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion.

If you read the 13th Amendment, it doesn't talk about narratives of racial difference. It doesn't talk about ideologies of white supremacy. It only talks about involuntary servitude and forced labor.

We all have a large stake in preserving our democracy, but I maintain that those without power in our society, the black, the brown, the poor of all colors, have the largest stake not because we have the most to lose, but because we have worked the hardest, and given the most, for what we have achieved.

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.

In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience.

The goal of Dr. Martin Luther King is to give Negroes a chance to sit in a segregated restaurant beside the same white man who had brutalized them for 400 years.

Jail threats did not dissuade Martin Luther King - and intergenerational justice is a moral issue of comparable magnitude to civil rights.

If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Race prejudice can't be talked down, it must be lived down.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

While we dance in the streets and pat ourselves on the back for being a nation great enough to reach beyond racial divides to elect our first African-American president, let us not forget that we remain a nation still proudly practicing prejudice.

The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.

In the time when my mother began standing up against prejudice and racism, the vast majority of white Americans rarely thought about civil rights.

A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.

The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people.

Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.