Negro Rights Quotes

Because The Honorable Elijah Muhammad makes black people brave enough, men enough to defend ourselves no matter what the odds are, the white man runs around here with a doctrine that Mr. Muhammad is advocating the violence when he is actually telling Negroes to defend themselves against violent people.

Before, the Negro in the South had always looked on the defensive, cringing. This time they were taking the initiative.

I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.

Intelligent white Southerners are ready to see Negroes as useful members of the community

For the Negro, Andrew Johnson did less than nothing when once he realized that the chief beneficiary of labor and economic reform in the South would be freedmen. His inability to picture Negroes as men made him oppose efforts to give them land; oppose national efforts to educate them; and above all things, oppose their rights to vote.

At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.

I'm proud of our court. It knocks back a lot of the propaganda the Communists put out about the way America treats her Negroes.

There is no middle ground on the question of interracial marriage. A person either favors or condemns such unions. The Negroes and negrophiles in the United States today who are waging the campaign for complete racial equality must be assumed to favor the amalgamation of the races unless they have openly stated their opposition.

I am not an enemy of the Negro. We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have.

While this rebellion has emancipated a great many negroes, it has emancipated still more white men.

The rights, privileges and responsibilities of full American citizenship. This is all that the Negro asks. He will not willingly accept less. As long as America offers less, she will be that much less a democracy. The whole way is the American way

In the combat between the emerging Negroes of the South and the ruling white trash, I sympathize greatly with the Negro.

There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in this State,…. Nor shall any indenture of any negro or mulatto, hereafter made and executed out of the State, or if made in the State, where the term of service exceeds one year, be of the least validity, except those given in the case of apprenticeships.

Lincoln merely nominally freed the bodies of Negroes. But Debs would free the bodies and minds of Negroes.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The great majority of negroes in the South who do not vote, do not care to vote and would not know for what to vote if they could.

Mrs. Roosevelt has gone so far in aiding the campaign for complete social equality that she has, in effect, endorsed intermarriage. She thinks marriage between whites and Negroes is an individual matter since it is a very personal problem. The unanimous condemnation of the Southland came down upon her.

Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.

I talked and talked of everything I know about the white man's inhuman treatment of the Negro.

If I had known of discrimination before I signed I wouldn’t have come. I heard in the midst of rehearsal a few days ago that no Negro can come into the theater. And in the capital city, too. Before I came to America, I didn’t know there was any place where colored people could not come in.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality - we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

I’m not saying that all those who are marching on Washington are Communists. I’m saying that a lot of fine Negro citizens have been misled in this country and are being used by the Communists to exploit them.

White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.