Major Owens Quotes

Segregation never brought anyone anything except trouble.

To attempt to explain a system like segregation to a 6 year child is a very difficult thing.

What the apartheid system was really good at doing was convincing groups to hate one another.

Although slavery may have been abolished, the crippling poison of racism still persists, and the struggle still continues.

Segregation is not exclusion.

When I was a child, it was segregated, and I couldn't go across a fence to certain parts of Gainesville.

Racism can be called our nation's own specific 'original sin.'

I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late '40's and early '50's was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it.

To the great majority of white Americans, the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. It is embarrassing. It makes for moral uneasiness.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

Intolerance has been the curse of our country.

If black people mistrust white people, they are mistrusting racism, and that is appropriate.

The organizers and perpetuators of segregation are as much the enemy of America as any foreign invader.

I know my destiny. I was born into animosity, bigotry and hatred. We had water for white folks, and water for coloured folks. White lines, black lines. I came from Beaufort in South Carolina, and it was tougher than Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same.

The color of your skin is your uniform in this ultimate battle for the survival of the West.

That's a good thing; that's a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in their place.

No Negro, mulatto, or Indian shall from and after the publication of this act bear any office ecclesiastical, civil or military, or be in any place of public trust or power, within this her majesty's colony and dominion of Virginia

Even here in Boston, we are informed, pride and prejudice have got to such a pitch, that in the very houses erected to the Lord they have built little places for the reception of colored people, where they must sit during meeting, or keep away from the house of God. Hypocrisy could hardly go further than that of preachers who could not see the evils at their door but could send out missionaries to convert the heathen, notwithstanding.

As a child, I lived through and survived the segregated South. I sat at the back of the bus at a time when America wasn't yet as great as it could be.

I grew up in the once segregated South. I experienced forced integration during my formative school years. I lived the sacrifices, burdens, and tears. I also lived the moments of understanding, of acknowledgment, of fellowship and success. I saw my parents and grandparents coming home beaten down - and some of my friends beaten up.

'Those people' is a bad word.