Fred Koch Quotes

… white racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture (of private discrimination and segregation) that has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II.

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.

There's no lobby for more spending on Black people in the cities.

African American Communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been before. Ever, ever, ever.

In the combat between the emerging Negroes of the South and the ruling white trash, I sympathize greatly with the Negro.

The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.

The white race ... will be proprietors of the land, and the blacks its cultivators; such is their destiny.

The worst disease from which the society of our nation suffers is ... the treatment of the Negro.

This is a contest between the white man’s hope and black evil.

It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the State [instead of colonizing them]? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature has made, and many other circumstances will divide us into parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.

I would not use the influence of my office to deter citizens from punishing that nigger brute. I would have gladly resigned as governor and gone to Honea Path and led the mob myself.

Whites don’t like to see the nigger with too much … White people was afraid that money will make the nigger act like his own man.

I am for the negro against the crocodile, but for the white man against the negro.

We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future of this nation …

If the blacks make war upon us they must abide by the awful retribution that will follow

But, because the blacks were so close to the very civilization which sought to keep them out, because they could not help but react in some way to its incentives and prizes, and because the very tissue of their consciousness received its tone and timbre from the strivings of that dominant civilization, oppression spawned among them a myriad variety of reactions, reaching from outright blind rebellion to sweet, other-worldly submissiveness.

Although the race problem may seem to lie dormant at times, it continually exists, lives on and on and sometimes rages with all the fury of a jungle beast. It gnaws at the very vitals of our existence, in time it will sap our strength and destroy the greatness of our American way of life unless solved properly and permanently.

The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.

The South politician preaches to the poor white man, "You got more than the blacks, don't complain. You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain. And the Negro's name Is used, it is plain, For the politician's gain, As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train; But it ain't him to blame -- He's only a pawn in their game.

I found everywhere now the most direct antagonism between the two classes. The whites charge generally that the negro is idle, and at the bottom of all local disturbances, and credit him with most of the vices and very few of the virtues of humanity. The negroes charge that the whites are revengeful, and intend to cheat the laboring class at every opportunity, and credit them with neither good purposes nor kindly hearts..

It’s time we faced facts. Southern people just don’t like Black people.

What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country -- a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired.... What is unique about Helms -- and from my viewpoint, unforgivable -- is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction . . . that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. . . . If things are allowed to go on as they are, it is certain that slavery is to be abolished. . . . By the time the North shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. . . . The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile Earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.

On July 4, 1805, whites in Philadelphia drove blacks out of the square facing Independence Hall… On July 4, 1834, a white mob in New York City burned down the Broadway Tabernacle because of the anti-slavery and anti-racist views of the church leaders…. On July 4, 1935, a white mob in Cannan, New Hampshire destroyed a school that was open to blacks…

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye.