Theodore G. Bilbo Quotes

I am not ... in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them ... to intermarry with white people.

I flatly deny that it is a civil right for a white man to marry a black woman or for a black man to marry a white woman.

White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.

The black herring of intermarriage has been dragged too often across the trail to justice. 'Would you want your sister to marry a nigger?' is still the question that is supposed to stun any white man who sponsors rights for Negroes. It stirs Negroes to ironic laughter, although on all levels they recognize the white man's fear of intermarriage as deep seated…

…I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races…nor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry

Many persons who say that they favor economic, political, and educational equality for the Negro oppose such equality in practice for fear that it will lead to 'social equality,' by which most of them mean intermarriage.

Negro members shall be treated as white members

It is the absolute human right of the Negro to mate with the white.

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.

if any white person shall be guilty of sexual intercourse with any of the African race, they shall be subject, on conviction thereof to a fine of not exceeding one thousand dollars, nor less than five hundred, to the use of the Territory, and imprisonment, not exceeding three years.

If white America is ready to extend complete democratic rights to colored people, there will be no race, no racial tension and no racial prejudice on either side, but we can be sure that any movement 'back to normalcy' in race relations will be bitterly resisted by colored people. It is now up to white America to make its choice...

In the matter of purely personal contacts like marriage, intimate friendships and sociable gatherings, 'equality' means the right to select one's own mates and close companions. The basis of choice may be cultured taste or vacant whim, but it is an unquestionable right so long as my free choice does not deny equal freedom on the part of others. No one can for a moment question the preference of a white man to marry a white woman or invite only white friends to dinner. But by the same token if a white Desdemona prefers a black Othello; or if Theodore Roosevelt includes among his dinner guests Booker T. Washington, their right also is undeniable and its restriction by law or custom an inadmissible infringement of civil rights.

If social equality should be granted and intermarriage should become a matter of individual taste, then the pride of race and the sense of blood superiority which has heretofore protected the Southern whites would be destroyed.

Blacks stand out uniquely among the array of American racial and ethnic groups in the degree to which marriage remains within the group.

Race has no place in American life or law.

His aim is to place the Negroes on equality with the white man—to have him eat at the same table, sit in the same pew, and vote at the same ballot box. He would appear to forget altogether the Creator himself made a distinction when he established the immovable barrier of color between the races.

Integration would lead to miscegenation, which will destroy our white race eventually.

The legislature shall never pass any law to authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a negro, or descendant of a negro.

This administration will work toward the eventual elimination of segregation from our national life

All that is needed to make us the finest race on Earth is to engraft upon us the negro element, which Providence has placed by our side on this continent.... The white people of America are dying for want of fresh blood ... until church and state and society recognize not only the propriety but the necessity of the marriage of white and black.... in short, until the great truth shall be declared in our public documents and announced in the messages of our Presidents, that it is desirable that the white man shall marry the black woman and the white woman the black man.

Negroes and whites should be allowed to marry at the dictates of the individual's heart and mind.

This problem, which exists because of the presence of … Negroes in this country, can be permanently solved only by the physical separation of the races or by resigning ourselves to total mongrelization resulting in the destruction of both the white and black races

Every one is a man. if you walk on two legs, you're a man. It's that simple.

The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under sanction of law.

I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false.