James F. Byrnes Quotes

The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.

I tried to make the point to the [Nixon] White House that, as a party, we needed to demonstrate that we cared and were concerned about votes from African-Americans and Hispanics. I don't know where we lost track after Abraham Lincoln.

If we don't like what the Republicans do, we need to get in there and change it.... By the turn of the century it'll be a 95 percent white Republican Party and a 99 percent black Democratic Party. That's not what we need.

Every planter South of the Potomac has three votes in effect for every five slaves he keeps in bondage; while a New England farmer who contributes ten-fold as much to the support of the Government has only a single vote.

Is there a single man among you who would vote for negro suffrage if he believed the negroes would vote the Democratic ticket? Not one, and you know it.

The post–Civil War Radical Republicans, as a group, cared very little for the black vote until they came to believe that it would help to secure their position ... against a Democratic resurgence. Once convinced that they would profit from the black vote, they passed the Fifteenth Amendment

We Blacks have never had a President; we’ve only had preachers.

Can we be bought for a few well timed positions before the election? Which is better, sweet Liberty to six millions of colored people, or a few positions.... Colored men, we are not for sale.

And for far too long, the Democrats have had a monopoly on black votes in this country.

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

I'm not ready to give you a clear answer on whether electoral politics holds any particular hope for progressives. It would mean that nothing I did ever mattered.

Mr. Cain would structurally change the voting demographic. There would be more black economic conservatives, and the Democrats would lose their stranglehold on the black vote.

History did not end in 1965. Largely because of the Voting Rights Act, voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers.

If you desire negro citizenship, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligible to office, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party.

The term Party is applied equally to the peaceful parties of America and to the Communist Party of Russia, the Nazi Party of Germany, and the Fascist Party of Italy. The methodology of these parties varies, but their fundamental objective-to place and keep their leaders in control of the government - is the same.

Complete right of self-determination must include the right to governmental separation.... The Communist Party must stand ... for the establishment of a Negro republic in the Black Belt.

Party leaders can't guarantee elections.

The division of the vote is hardly to be considered at this time. It is the duty of the Negro to vote for the Republican party. It will be quite time to consider the advisability of dividing the vote … when shotguns are dropped from the assassins hands, when mob fires cease to be funeral pyres, when the accident of birth-nature ceases to amount to a crime, when color and oppression are no longer synonymous, when the laws of this fair land are administered to all alike. The Democratic party has spoken. It is not misunderstood.

I cannot run the political machine. I have enough on my hands without that. It is the people's business.

Negro President

Your vote is your voice.

Until the Negro votes on a large scale, we will have to rely more and more on mass direct action as the one realistic political weapon.

What is it that we want to do? … within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State…. if we would have white supremacy, we must establish it by law--not by force or fraud.

At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, African slavery existed in twelve of the thirteen States. Slaves are recognized as property, and as a basis of political power, by the Federal Compact, and special provisions are made by that instrument for their protection as property…. the opponents of slavery shall arrest its further expansion, and by Congressional Legislation exclude it from the common Territories of the Federal Government, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction…. Abraham Lincoln--he stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all constitutional barriers, ignores the obligation of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down sovereignty and equality of the states, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma—the equality of the races white and black.

We demand that Negroes be employed on the basis of their skill and intelligence in all branches of our federal service in every public and private industry …. We demand equal education opportunities with equal access for the Negro student to all public tax-supported institutions. We demand the democratic right to vote without poll-taxes, white primaries and other devices which keep the majority of Southern Negroes a voteless group with no voice either in the selection of their representatives or a check on unjust public policies. We demand an end to segregation in transportation, in housing, in health and recreational facilities and in all other social service. We demand Negro and minority group representation on all administrative agencies so that these groups may help to determine policies for all people.