Rand Paul Quotes

The Republican Party's history is rich and chock full of emancipation and black history.

The Democrats co-opted the credit for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But if you go back and look at the history, a larger percentage of Republicans voted for that than did Democrats. But a Democrat president signed it, so they co-opted credit for having passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In our state, I'm really proud of the fact that the ones who overturned Jim Crow in Kentucky were Republicans fighting against an entirely unified Democrat Party. So I am proud to be Republican. I can't imagine being anything else.

We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.

I'd like to think I would have signed the Civil Rights bill and wouldn't have had any issues with it.

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.

The Civil Rights Bill is a massive assault on the Constitutional system … a bill far more drastic than any bill ever presented even during the days of Reconstruction.

In 1965, the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7 was planned to dramatize to the state of Alabama and to the nation that people of color wanted to register to vote.

If segregationists had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate today, I would not be a top contender to be president of the United States.

Yes, President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, but a hundred years later, the Republican Party wasn't Lincoln's. Richard Nixon became president by courting Americans upset by integration, intentionally fueling the racial divide.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement.

I'm old enough to have lived through a time when Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and others died so people of color could vote.

[The Democratic Party]it's a party with an incredible century-and-a-half history of institutional racism.

The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King.

The Civil Rights Movement, it wasn't just a couple of, you know, superstars like Martin Luther King. It was thousands and thousands - millions, I should say - of people taking risks, becoming leaders in their community.

I always felt that, through it all, there was a really strong, forward, positive, constructive accomplishment by the American people during that period, if you consider that during the period from 1954 to 1965, this country broke through the caste system.

You grow up with a heightened sense of the Civil Rights Movement, but I think it wasn't until I became of age that I really had a great appreciation for the struggle that took place.

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.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

Men and women in my lifetime have died fighting for the right to vote: people like James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered while registering black voters in Mississippi in 1964, and Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 during the Selma march for voting rights.

In the summer of 1964, my sister and I went to South Ballston, Virginia, to stay with my aunt and her kids. They passed the civil rights bill that summer; my cousins were so happy because now they could swim in the pool.

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

Brown v. Board helped unite us all, and gave us all great pride knowing we all are truly E Pluribus Unum - one people out of many.

The history of American democracy, to say the least, has been checkered. Our nation was founded at a time when people of African descent were held in bondage. After slavery was abolished, they were forced to endure legal discrimination for another 100 years.

I'm a child of the Civil Rights Movement.