Ernie Banks Quotes

Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man's wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.

Every day that America was segregated was a day when America was not following our founding ideals.

I never will let anyone make, maneuver me into making a distinction between the Mississippi form of discrimination and the New York City form of discrimination. It's, it's both discrimination; it's all discrimination.

The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination, against poverty, against racism.

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.

Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!

We of Africa protest that, in this day and age, we should continue to be treated as lesser human beings than other races.

Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn't be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say.

Americans, the eyes of the world are upon you. How can you expect the world to believe in you and respect your preaching of democracy when you yourself treat your colored brothers as you do?

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights.

I hate to say this about the Republican establishment, but their view of Civil Rights is to tip the black waiter five bucks at the country club.

I demand simple justice. I am not here as beggar. I do not care so far as I am personally concerned whether you give me a seat or not. I will go back to my people and come here again.

Ours has not been a racially democratic society for 300 years.

Opportunity seems to be color-coded here in America

To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist.

American democracy is a failure. It is a miserable failure. It has failed because it is a limited and racial and divisible democracy …. How can we fight for democracy in Burma, a country we have not seen, when we don't have democracy in Birmingham, a city we have seen.

No American should ever live under the cloud of suspicion because of what they look like.

Slavery was gone but its inequalities remained.

Our duty is to fight! Then we can adjust the problems that remain in the life of the colored man.

Wherever there was injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion.

We need more leaders speaking up for minority groups who have been marginalized and attacked.

Over 17 years, I took on banks, landlords, real estate firms, local governments, anybody who treated anybody unfairly.

Freedom in America was not always flat. Racism made it un-flat, so that some people had privileges over other people.

I think history repeats itself. There's a constant conversation between the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter what your field is, whether it's gender equality, the Time's Up movement, or diversity casting, it's always going to be a back-and-forth battle.