Jesse Jackson Quotes

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens.

The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.

The thing is that it's always a constant reminder of how violent this country has been, always has been, you know. I'm still frustrated with these conversations: [Barack] Obama is black so that means this, that things are better, or it means that you voted for him because he's black.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

I think the sad fact is, there's a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman. And I think that's reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.

Historically, you've had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people.

I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did.

I never have a problem with being black. I have a problem with the easy association of what that means to some people.

When you're white, the sky's the limit. When you're black, the limit's the sky.

The core of the culture is racism and how black men are viewed. They've always been demonized and seen as threats in our culture. Another holdover from slavery. We've got to deal with that core root of racism and demonization of the upbringing of black men. Black women are not exempt by any means.

Labels applied to people of any race are inherently offensive.

Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar's own figuring, hardly human at all.

The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

The problem is that America is still so racist - I guess it's hard to find another word for it ­ - that they still, the press in general and many people, perceive only white women as feminists. They think black women are black.

Race prejudice is the devil unchained.

I think racial justice - and addressing the sick and enduring legacy of structural racism - remains one of the greatest challenges of our time, and one that's particularly important for more and more white people to speak up about.

This is why integration will not work. It assumes that the two races, black and white, are equal and can be made to live as one. This is not true.

The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State.

So the mayor of New Orleans would have used his own buses had the people had been white?

To the average white man, a courthouse even in Mississippi is a place where justice is dispensed. To me, the black man, it is a place where justice is dispensed with.

Separate schools for African Americans in effect branded a whole race with the stigma of inferiority and degradation

When we finally got school buses for African American students in Georgia, the state legislature ordained that the front bumpers be painted black. Not even the school busses could be equal.