Disenfranchisement Quotes

There is no reason to equivocate or lie about it. The Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890 was held for no other reason than to eliminate the nigger from politics…let the world know it just as it is.

As to those who have no landed property, ... the allowing them to vote for legislators is an impropriety.

Stopping TB requires a government program that functions every day of the year, and that's hard in certain parts of the world. And partly it's because of who tuberculosis affects: It tends to affect the poor and disenfranchised most.

The polls are just being used as another tool of voter suppression. The polls are an attempt to not reflect public opinion, but to shape it. Yours. They want to depress the heck out of you.

A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

To those who say derogatory things about colonialism, I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.

We are accountable to each other; having an equitable Minnesota benefits everyone, not just the disenfranchised.

When I was growing up in rural Alabama, it was impossible for me to register to vote. I didn't become a registered voter until I moved to Tennessee, to Nashville, as a student.

Policy, for the most part, has been made by white people in America, not by people of color.

The Ferguson Grand Jury's decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown is a miscarriage of justice. It is a slap in the face to Americans nationwide who continue to hope and believe that justice will prevail.

The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.

North as well as South, the Negroes have emerged from slavery into a serfdom of poverty and restricted rights.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy and consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.

Many of the young people living in inner-city America don't see themselves - I mean, they even talk about things like death and dying. And there's a tremendous loss of hope. And of all the things to lose, I think nothing is worse or more difficult to overcome than the loss of hope.

Discrimination in voting is something that no American in his heart may justify.

The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defense, to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement.

Dwayne Betts is the kind of man who should be receiving awards from the Connecticut bar. Instead, he hasn't been admitted.

Many of Israel's Arabs, which see themselves as part of the Palestinian population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line - a pain they feel the state of Israel is responsible for.

The men of middling property and poor men can never be safe in a mixed representation with the men of over-grown property.

One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one.

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

Poverty does not cause violence and terrorism. Lack of education does not cause terrorism.

We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.