civil rights activists Quotes

Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! [...] You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Long before many of us were even conscious of our own degradation, these men [Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. DuBois] fought for African national and racial equality.

There were these great women in Montgomery, [Rosa Louise] Parks was among them. Jo Ann Robinson [who organized the bus boycott] was among them. It's always these ordinary women and men of grace who have been waiting and seething and planning to change things that are unjust that bring movement.

The very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more.

Of course, we have leaders in the African American community as well that we've all worked with. One of the great rewards of being an activist is that you get to meet all these wonderful people. And there are many unsung heroes. There are so many out there that are good people that are working hard.

We look at the legacy of Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker, Malcolm X and Martin King. We have, and part of the struggle now in the age of [Barack] Obama is how do we keep alive the legacy of Martin King?

I have crossed over on the backs of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Madam C. J. Walker. Because of them I can now live the dream. I am the seed of the free, and I know it. I intend to bear great fruit.

Every day I wear my Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth medallions around my neck. When I think I'm having a bad day, I try to think about their day, and I get up.

To simply say that black people made allegations that substantiated an unfair and selective prosecution where you had more than half of the counts thrown out, where you had 27 counts where it took the jury less than four hours to find them not guilty - that speaks to fact that here we have three civil-rights activists, acquitted. What we have here is a prosecution that was baseless, a prosecution that chilled African Americans right to vote.

Some people know Rosa Parks, they know Daisy Bates in Arkansas, but every... Ruby Doris Smith, Diane Nash, countless individuals.

Jesse Jackson and Al Not-So-Sharpton would be lisping their ebonic mumbo-jumbo that the policy and the president are racist and bigoted.