Civil Rights Legislation Quotes

We could beat back Kennedy on Civil Rights, but Lyndon [Johnson] knows how to beat us.

At the end of the day, the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott had to be converted into the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We don't want politicians who've gotta be coaxed, cajoled and protested. We want them on our side from the beginning.

No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.

The [Civil Rights] movement needed the Kennedys too much … It would not be in the interests of the movement to hold on to me if the Kennedys had doubts.

Remember the vast majority of the Democrats as well as all the Republicans in the House of Representatives in Louisiana voted for my signature-piece of legislation in the house which was a bill, actually a bill for true civil rights. That there must be no discrimination against anyone on the basis of race in affirmative-action.

Lyndon Johnson used to call his chauffer “Boy,” but he passed the greatest Civil Rights bill in the history of the company.

We are going to get the Civil Right Bill! Dirksen is going to come out in support…. and don’t ask me what I had to give him.

It was clear to me as a civil rights leader in the '60s that unless we put the social and economic underpinnings beneath the political and the civil rights, we wouldn't go anywhere.

When I represented the people of Texas I voted the way they wanted. If I should be president I would represent the people of the United States and my actions would reflect their views.

This is the most progressive Administration in the civil rights field in history, and you're going to quit over that? I want the Johnson Administration to practice what it preaches.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King's success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

By the early 1960s, there was a moral consensus on what needed to be done on civil rights.

We could have beaten John Kennedy on Civil Rights. We can’t beat Lyndon Johnson. He’s a man who understands power and how to use it. He’ll tear your arm off at the shoulder and beat you over the head with it, but he’ll get the votes. We’re going to lose to Lyndon Johnson.

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.

Obama's endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnson's legislative success on civil rights.

Everything African-Americans - every freedom they have obtained - came from Republicans, not Democrats. All the way back to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the Civil Rights movement. Civil Rights legislation was passed by a Republican Congress.

I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.

I would say to Republicans that when you look at civil rights legislation that took place in the 1960s, it took a bipartisan effort to get those things done, and so what I would tell my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, is let's come together, and let's be for fairness.

Up until, really, Roosevelt, African-Americans largely voted ninety per cent Republican. That was the political origins, that's what their political voice was in the Republican party. During that history, that last sixty or seventy years of history, the Republican party effectively walked away from the community. They were afraid to really embrace civil rights even though they embraced civil rights legislation. And so it's not enough to just to put it on paper, you gotta actually show up and be in the community, and understand what that struggle was really about.

When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks.

My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.

The mainstream sort of presentation of the civil rights movement was not something that I directly inherited.

Andrew Johnson wasn't too bad, but he was overwhelmed by a hostile Congress.

Abolition didn't just happen - people made it happen. Women's suffrage didn't just happen - people made it happen. Civil Rights legislation didn't just happen - people made it happen. And marriage equality didn't just happen, either - people made it happen.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.