A. Philip Randolph Quotes

The rights, privileges and responsibilities of full American citizenship. This is all that the Negro asks. He will not willingly accept less. As long as America offers less, she will be that much less a democracy. The whole way is the American way

Votes for women didn’t come until the 1920’s. Votes for Blacks didn’t effectively come until the 1960’s.

Our Ancestors prayed for 389 years to place a person of color in the White House. They led over 200 slave revolts, fought in 11 wars, one being a civil war where over 600,000 people died. Our mothers fought and were killed for women’s suffrage, our grandparents were lynched for the civil rights bill of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965…my father never had the opportunity to vote and I believe it is my sacred duty to pull the lever for every member of my family who was denied the right to vote. I will not allow narrow-minded ministers or regressive politicians the satisfaction of keeping me from my sacred right to vote to shape the future for my grandchildren.

All who abhor the immortality of discrimination and social injustice toward their fellow men must share the impatience of the nation’s Negro Americans and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in full active and affirmative support of their struggle to make a present reality out of the 100 year old Emancipation Proclamation.

The New Deal ultimately undermined Jim Crow’s prospects. The very legislation embraced by Southern segregationists created at first mere chinks, then whole openings for social change that were grasped by an incipient, soon powerful, movement for equal rights for Blacks.

Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.

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.

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities…. This nation … will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

The Ballot or the Bullet

The more conservative element of Negroes differ from those who hold the most radical views in opposition to segregation only in terms of time and technique of its elimination …. all Negroes must condemn any form of segregation based on race, creed or color anywhere in our nation

By 'Freedom' for Negroes, I meant and still mean, full economic, political and Social equality with American citizens, in thought, expression and action, with no discrimination based on race or color.

It is also unsatisfactory to some, that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.

This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, “Are the blacks good enough to be free?” but, “Have they the right?” So today the question is not, “Will outrages result from freeing humanity?” but, “Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?”

We got the vote, which we should've been born with, in 1920. Everything we've had to struggle for - it's ridiculous.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Civil Rights Act.

We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation - no compromise, no filibuster - and that include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote.

I'm a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.

We live … in an age of progressive democracy. ... In its political effects it discards the prerogative of a few to govern and looks to the rights of all. And whether you deem it practicable or not, you, who prattle about democracy, this spirit is opening a grand law of humanity more comprehensive than all others, that looks farther than the skin to say who shall have rights and who shall be maintained in the free enjoyment of what the God of nature has given them. You cannot guide this tendency of the age to sympathize alone with the serfs of Europe and the barbarians of Asia and leave untouched and unnoticed those in our midst who suffer either from the oppression of laws or for want of their protection.

Essentially, Eisenhower passed on to his successors the problem of guaranteeing constitutional rights to Negro citizens.

American women who know the history of this country will always resent the fact that American men chose to enfranchise Negroes fresh from slavery before enhancing their wives and mothers.

The law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.

In this state there are 200 thousand able intelligent, honorable negroes, not an inferior race, mind you, who are ready to protect their liberty. The matter is in your own hands.

Negro President

The consciences of the American people will not be permitted to slumber until this great constitutional right, the equality of the suffrage, equality of opportunity, freedom of political action and political thought, shall not be the mere cold formalities of constitutional enactment as now, but a living birthright which the poorest and humblest, white or black, native born or naturalized citizen, may confidently enjoy, and which the richest and most powerful dare not deny.