Quotes by Civil Rights Activists

Nobody can give you freedom, nobody can give you equality or justice. If you are a man, you take it.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who is for or against it.

We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

Malcolm X

I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.

Malcolm X

I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

Malcolm X

I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn't born in me.

Jesse Jackson

Whatever my individual desires were to be free I was not alone. There were others who felt the same way.

Rosa Parks

Is some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.

César Chávez

When caught reading the Bible W.C. Fields said T'm looking for loopholes.' The Bible is nothing but a succession of civil rights struggles by the Jewish people against their oppressors.

Jesse Jackson

Strong people don't need strong leaders.

Ella Baker

Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth.

Mahalia Jackson

Of all the injuries inflicted by racism on people of colour the most corrosive is the wound within the internalized racism that leads some victims at unspeakable cost to their own sense of self to embrace the values of their oppressors.

H. Jack Geiger

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighbourhood after dark.

Dick Gregory

Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power.

Malcolm X

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

Jesse Jackson

O black and unknown bards of long ago How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How in your darkness did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?

James Weldon Johnson

Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth.

Mahalia Jackson

H. Jack Geiger

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighbourhood after dark.

Dick Gregory

Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power.

Malcolm X

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

Jesse Jackson

O black and unknown bards of long ago How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How in your darkness did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?

James Weldon Johnson

Someday the sun is going to shine down on me in some faraway place.

Mahalia Jackson

Hold your head high stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes but morning comes. ... Keep hope alive.

Jesse Jackson

Hold your head high stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes but morning comes. ... Keep hope alive.

Jesse Jackson

Hope is a song in a weary throat.

Pauli Murray

[Our children] had the privilege of growing up where they'd raised a lot of food. They were never hungry. They could share their food with people. And so you share your lives with people.

Ella Baker

We have to improve life not just for those who have the most skills and those who know how to manipulate the system. But also for and with those who often have so much to give but never get the opportunity.

Dorothy Height

We've got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that if we do not no one else is going to do it.

Dorothy Height

I won't say I'm out of condition now - but I even puff going downstairs.

Dick Gregory

The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use.

Ella Baker

One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.

Dick Gregory

Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.

Josephine Baker

Whenever there is chaos it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.

Septima Poinsette Clark

God doesn't make orange juice God makes oranges.

Jesse Jackson

How is it possible to write one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?

Malcolm X

Betty's a good Muslim woman and wife. I don't imagine many other women might put up with the way I am. Awakening this brainwashed black man and telling this arrogant, devilish white man the truth about himself, Betty understands, is a full-time job

Malcolm X

It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.

César Chávez

New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face, and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments,--constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; then with a sudden breath she blows the bubbles out and laughs mockingly as she watches them fall.

James Weldon Johnson

I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.

Malcolm X

It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.

Malcolm X

The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

James Weldon Johnson

Momma, a welfare cheater. A criminal who couldn't stand to se her kids go hungry, or grow up in slumbs and end up mugging people in dar corners. I guess the system didn't want her to get off relief, the way it kept sending social workers around to be sure Momma wasn't trying to make things better.

Dick Gregory

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.

Malcolm X

You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.

Bayard Rustin

I say, sir, that you can never make an intelligent judgment without evidence.

Malcolm X

The old men had a set rabbit-hunting strategy that they had always used. Usually when a dog jumps a rabbit, and the rabbit gets away, that rabbit will always somehow instinctively run in a circle and return sooner or later past the very spot where he originally was jumped. Well, the old men would just sit and wait in hiding somewhere for the rabbit to come back, then get their shots at him. I got to thinking about it, and finally I thought of a plan. I would separate from them and Big Boy and I would go to a point where I figured that the rabbit, returning, would have to pass me first.It worked like magic. I began to get three and four rabbits before they got one. The astonishing thing was that none of the old men ever figured out why. They outdid themselves exclaiming what a sure shot I was. I was about twelve, then. All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life—that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business—you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.

Malcolm X

Whose starboard eyeSaw chariot 'swing low'?

James Weldon Johnson

I don't know how many marriage breakups are caused by these movie-and television-addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing -- then getting mad when a poor, scraggly husband comes in tired and sweaty from working like a dog all day, looking for some food.

Malcolm X

American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the 'people' like is poohpoohed; whatever is 'popular' is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

James Weldon Johnson

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.

Malcolm X

No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition whites show towards me…as long as that same respect and recognition isn’t shown towards everyone of our people in this country–it doesn’t exist for me.

Malcolm X

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

James Weldon Johnson

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community... Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.

César Chávez

Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years.My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said.But she didn't recognize me at all.She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?"She said, staring, "All the people have gone."I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me.It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."-Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

Rosa Parks

I'm not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.

Josephine Baker

The Algerians were revolutionsists, they wanted land. France offered to let them be integrated into France. They told France, to hell with Fance, they wanted some land, not some France.

Malcolm X

The only way to reduce ugliness in the world is to reduce it in yourself,

Bayard Rustin

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: 'We don't serve colored people here.' "I said: 'that's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.

Dick Gregory

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