Civil Rights Quotes

"It was August 28th, 1963, and the greatest civil rights coalition in modern history had descended upon Washington."

"Even after facing jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. courageously and boldly spoke out against racial inequality."

"The civil rights movement was not a mirage... It was live and in living color."

“It is important that the strongest pressures against the continuation of segregation, North or South, be continually and constantly manifested.”

“The experience of Negroes in America has been different in kind, not just in degree, from that of other ethnic groups. It is not merely the history of slavery alone, but also that a whole people were marked as inferior by the law. And that mark has endured.”

“We didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and being afraid the house would burn down.”

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

“If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you, "Don't drink out of the coloured fountain, dear, it's dirty." In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum, and the coloured fountain was always clean.”

“We know the march is not yet over. We know the race is not yet won.”

"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free, so other people would be also free.”

“Until justice is blind to colour, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the colour of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.”

Lyndon B. Johnson

“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

John Lewis

“You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.”

Medgar Evers

“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Earl Warren

“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background.”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“By any means necessary.”

Malcolm X

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

“You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”

Malcolm X

“Nobody's free until everybody's free.”

Fannie Lou Hamer