Jesse Helms Quotes

The time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to.

The first thing I did [in Michigan] was join a picket line of a pizzeria in Ann Harbor in 1963 that didn't allow African Americans to eat there.

The time for running has come to an end. You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared niggers are dead!

It was illegal for black people and white people to play checkers together in Birmingham. And there were even black and white Bibles to swear to tell the truth on in many parts of the South.

Blood will run in the streets if Negro pupils should attempt to enter Central High School.

Please tell the Attorney General that we have been cooling off for 350 years. If we cool off any more, we’ll be in the deep freeze. The Freedom Rides will go on.

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.

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

My father was pretty independent. He was - he was arrested once in Nashville when he was on one of his sales trips because he had a black - guy to lunch. So that took a fair amount of courage at the time.

I came back to Louisville after the Olympics with my shiny gold medal. Went into a luncheonette where black folks couldn't eat. Thought I'd put them on the spot. I sat down and asked for a meal. The Olympic champion wearing his gold medal. They said, "We don't serve niggers here." I said, "That's okay, I don't eat 'em." But they put me out in the street. So I went down to the river, the Ohio River, and threw my gold medal in it.

It's not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

The only thing I really feel is necessary is that the black people, not only in Mississippi, will have to actually upset this applecart. What I mean by that is, so many things are under the cover that will have to be swept out and shown to this whole world, not just to America. This thing they say of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is all on paper.

We blacks had problems in the '60s and we solved them by marching. We've still got problems - let's march.

I had a very depressing response because I realized that these were my own people, these were Negroes throwing eggs at me. I'm concerned about the fact that maybe all of us have contributed to this by not working harder to get rid of the conditions, the poverty, the social isolation, and all of the conditions that cause individuals to respond like this.

I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.

The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.

I don't sign for white people.

When I went south in the 1960s, I knew I could die. If I went down there and did what I did up in Chicago and made all of those hatin' white folks laugh, then I would have been defeated.

But after Mr. Evers got shot a week ago, lot a colored folk is frustrated in this town. Especially the younger ones, who ain't built up a callus yet.

In this country, these Negro leaders have Negroes sittin' - sitting down, thinking that that - there's dignity towards sitting in.

When the South has trouble with its Negroes - when the Negroes refuse to remain in their "place" - it blames "outside agitators" and "Northern interference." When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.

I believe when a negro church is bombed, that a white church should be bombed.

The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell!