Civil Rights Leader Quotes

Policies change, and programs change, according to time.But objective never changes. You might change your method of achieving the objective, but the objective never changes. Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality, by any means necessary

Reverend Galamison is fighting a hard battle against great opposition, and I admire a man who fights a hard battle against great opposition.

The Negro fought and bled and died in every war the white man waged, and he still won't give you justice. You nursed his baby and cleaned behind his wife, and he still won't give you freedom; you turned the other cheek while he lynched you and raped your women, but he still won't give you equality.

My father didn't know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather, and his grandfather got it from his grandfather who got it from the slavemaster.

I live like a man who's dead already! I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything

If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality.

The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.

Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, you’ll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought you’ll be in some kind of sit-down action.

Why should [Uncle Sam] send 20 billion dollars down there [South America], which is going to go down the drain every time you have a racial in - incident in this country?

A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.

I don't think you can having an opportunity to ride either on the front or the back or in the middle of someone else's bus doesn't dignify you.

You're going to have a racial explosion, and a racial explosion is more dangerous than an atomic explosion. It's going to explode because black people are dissatisfied; they're dissatisfied not only with the white man, but they're dissatisfied with these Negroes who have been sitting around here posing as leaders and spokesmen for black people and actually making the problem worse instead of making the problem better.

If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you'll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.

Now, you integration-minded Negroes are trying to force yourselves on your former slave master, trying to make him accept you in his drawing room; you want to hang out with his women rather than the women of your own kind.

At this point I hadn't yet gotten deep into the historic condition that negroes in this country are confronted with, but at that point in my prison studies I, I read, I studied Islam as a religion more so than as I later come to know it in its connection with the plight or problem of Negroes in this country.

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.

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.

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.

Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.

You have to realize that up until about 1959, Africa was dominated by the colonial powers. And by the colonial powers of Europe having complete control over Africa, they projected Africa always in a negative light - jungles, savages, cannibals, nothing civilized.

... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.

If he [Uncle Sam] can't do this [integration], then they will - it will alienate them. And all of the hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars that he has sent abroad trying to buy the friendship of the dark world will go right down the drain.

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

The only difference between [America] and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don't practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing.

Daring to reach, to climb, to crawl, to scratch, to get back up when you've been knocked down, to push forward - ever forward - to forgive. It means sacrificing everything if necessary, to carve out a place for your own existence. It means living.

In this country, these Negro leaders have Negroes sittin' - sitting down, thinking that that - there's dignity towards sitting in.

I had one warden tell me since I've been out, and I visited an inmate in prison right here in New York, Warden Fay up at Green Haven. I visited an inmate in prison and he told me that he didn't want anybody in there trying to spread this religion.

I refer to a negro politician as a negro who is selected by Negroes and who is backed by Negroes.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States struck back. She didn't go and bomb - she bombed any part of Japan. She dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Those people in Hiroshima probably hadn't even, some of them; most of them hadn't even killed anybody.

Those who would hunt a man need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters.

The government is responsible for the violence, as long as they don't stop it. And if we have to get violent to protect ourselves, then it's the government that should be charged with the crime, because we're only upholding a law that they've been unable to uphold.

Do something for yourself, and then you will be recognized by the entire world as a man who has done for himself what others have done for themselves.

These Negroes who go for integration and intermarriage are linking up with the very people who lynched their fathers, raped their mothers, and put their kid sisters in the kitchen to scrub floors.

I think that the problem of the American negro goes beyond the principle of any organization whether it's a religious, political, or otherwise.

You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get it. Then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it.

What does a black man look like begging for a cup of coffee in a white restaurant, and doesn't have a job to back up his - to pay for it when, when - when he does get the coffee? It's putting the cart before the horse.

I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin.

The white man is not inherently evil, but America's racist society influences him to act evilly. The society has produced and nourishes a psychology which brings out the lowest, most base part of human beings.

You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes.

It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'

I don't mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do.

In America you have the mouse now trying to sit down on the elephant, thinking that he's going somewhere. And it's - and it's absurd.

Once negro community recognize it as such, they can adopt the same measures against the community that harbors the criminals who are responsible for this activity.

Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don't want to leave anybody out.

A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She's the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution. The Russian revolution was bloody, Chinese revolution was bloody, French revolution was bloody, Cuban revolution was bloody, and there was nothing more bloody then the American Revolution. But today this country can become involved in a revolution that won't take bloodshed. All she's got to do is give the black man in this country everything that's due him, everything.

Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Growing is the result of learning.

That morning was when I first began to reappraise the 'white man.' It was when I first began to perceive that 'white man,' as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions.

I say that the negro, when he is, when, when they cease to look at him as a negro and realize that he's a human being, then they will realize that he is just as capable and has the right to do anything that any other human being on this earth has a right to do to defend himself.

When you are equal with another person, the problem of integration doesn't even arise.

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.

We're primarily interested in solving the problem of 20 million black people. And if integration is going to solve the problem tomorrow, then let's integrate. But since the Supreme Court issued its desegregation decision seven years ago, and you only have about six or seven percent integration now, on an educational level, that means that the black man trying to use integration as a means of solving his problem will be another 100 years just getting integration on an educational level.

I saw all races, all colors, blue eyed blonds to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists, no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words

Its the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease

I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan. The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot and George Washington - wasn't nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

White America is in the minority.

Since integration is so slow, and the white man knows the problem must be solved, the only thing that he can do tomorrow is, is separate, because we're already separated.