Civil Rights Quotes - Page 10

• There's no point going to a country which is torturing people to ask them to stop if they can point out that the United States is doing it too. It enormously weakens the argument. Back in the early days of the Bush administration, PEN made a decision that we would try and make human rights issues and civil rights issues in this country part of the priority, and not just international issues, which had more or less been the priority up until then.

  Salman Rushdie

  Country, People, Priorities

  Source: pen.org

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• Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws.

  Rand Paul

  Rights, Jim Crow Laws, Practice

  "Rand Paul attempts to clarify" by Steve Benen, washingtonmonthly.com. May 20, 2010.

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• It is long past time to eliminate bigotry in the workplace and to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans. It is time to make clear that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are first class citizens. They are full and welcome members of our American family and they deserve the same civil rights protections as all other Americans. It is time for us to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Such discrimination is wrong and should not be tolerated.

  Tom Harkin

  Gay, Bisexual, Past

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• I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person. I have clearly stated in prior interviews that I abhor racial discrimination and would have worked to end segregation. Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  Rand Paul

  Believe, Rights, Racism

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• Where was the libertarian right during the great struggles for individual liberty in America in the last half-century? The libertarian movement has been conspicuously absent from the campaigns for civil rights for nonwhites, women, gays and lesbians.

  Michael Lind

  Struggle, Gay, Rights

  Source: blogs.chicagotribune.com

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• It was the best route to get folks to understand segregation fast. Civil rights and women's rights had a clear history. Making the transition to rights for people with disabilities became easier because we had the history of the other two.

  Major Owens

  Rights, Two, People

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• Despite all of the civil rights gains of the past several decades, when it comes to economic opportunity, African Americans and Latinos still experience far more unemployment than do whites and Asians, average wages are lower, and household wealth is lower. A smaller percentage of African Americans and Latinos attend, and complete, college, than is the case with whites and Asians, and a higher percentage end up in prison. All of these are indicators of massive disparities in opportunity, and these disparities are mirrored in poverty data.

  Sasha Abramsky

  Past, Opportunity, College

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We know that there were so many Japanese American soldiers in World War II who were fighting in Europe despite the fact that their families, their parents were back home in American prison camps. It's savagely ironic that between themselves and the African-American soldiers, who were also segregated and didn't see the fruition of the work the culminated in the Civil Rights Act until the '60s, that these American heroes and their stories are not well known; and the fact that the 442nd/100th became the most decorated unit in U.S. history.

  Tamlyn Tomita

  War, Hero, Home

  Source: thecelebritycafe.com

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• My book has a pre - civil rights setting with a post - civil rights sensibility. I believe less and less that there is something called "The Black Experience," though undoubtedly there was one once.

  Ayana Mathis

  Believe, Book, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Coming to the civil rights movement in the twentieth century, we begin to have this idea that's still with us today, which is that the main purpose of public education is closing achievement gaps.

  Dana Goldstein

  Achievement, Purpose, Today

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Cartoons were very conservative. The country was very conservative. Although the liberals were allegedly in charge for a long time, there was a very acceptable balance what people would talk about in public. And I wanted to stretch those and move further out. And as the civil rights movement began, I started doing cartoons on that and on sit-ins and I was, along with Bill Mauldin, a great cartoonist out of World War II, arguably one of two white cartoonists doing this kind of work, Bill and me.

  Jules Feiffer

  Country, War, Moving

  Source: bigthink.com

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• That was exciting to be able to comment on civil rights. I mean, the civil rights movement that young people don't know about today, but Martin Luther King was considered by the establishment press in the early years of the sit-in movement as a dangerous man, and he was the equivalent at that time as Malcolm X. And he was told to stop his demonstrations; they were against the law and all of that. Now that he's sainted and sanctified we've forgotten.

  Jules Feiffer

  Mean, Men, People

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.

  Al Franken

  Rights, Vietnam, Movement

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• In California, Jim Jones even staged a shooting of himself. The lesson of this was two-fold. One, that he was a god - he could heal himself. He had these magic powers. A large segment of his congregation came from a Pentecostal tradition that believed in faith healing and already believed Jones had the power to cure others. And two, the "shooting" made him seem important. Civil rights leaders were being gunned down - MLK, Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X - and he longed to be considered as heroic and important as they were.

  Julia Scheeres

  Healing, Leader, Magic

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success.

  Marian Wright Edelman

  Jobs, School, Mean

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• A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.

  Gloria Steinem

  Women, Equality, Empowering

  "Happy 80th, Gloria Steinem" by Kathleen McCartney, www.cnn.com. March 25, 2014.

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• I am a Minnesotan, and not just because I root for the Vikings and the Twins. I like the Minnesota-nice sensibility. I like the liberal tradition; I like the Hubert Humphrey tradition fighting for civil rights.

  Al Franken

  Nice, Fighting, Rights

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• Food is an important lens onto the civil rights movement. One of the central issues of the movement was the right to eat in places that served the public. This battle led to the lunch counter sit-ins, which became embattled, contested places.

  Marcie Cohen Ferris

  Important, Battle, Civil Rights Movement

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I was involved in the civil rights movement way back in the late '50s and through the '60s and '70s. I was doing a civil rights musical here in Los Angeles and we sang at one of the rallies where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke, and I remember the thrill I felt when we were introduced to him. To have him shake your hand was an absolutely unforgettable experience. Even before I could vote, I was involved in the political arena.

  George Takei

  Political, Musical, Vote

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn't because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities.

  Stokely Carmichael

  Rights, Cities, Black

  Black Power Address at UC Berkeley, delivered October 1966, Berkeley, CA

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• I would not have suffered my name to have been used by my friends on anywise as President of the United States, or candidate for that office, if I and my friends could have had the privilege of enjoying our religious and civil rights as American citizens, even those rights which the Constitution guarantees unto all her citizens alike.

  Joseph Smith, Jr.

  Religious, Freedom, Names

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• The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.

  Carol Moseley Braun

  Rights, Racism, Victory

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• Most Americans who made it past the fourth grade have a pretty good idea who Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr., were. Not many Americans have even heard of Alice Paul, Howard W. Smith, and Martha Griffiths. But they played almost as big a role in the history of women’s rights as Marshall and King played in the history of civil rights for African-Americans. They gave women the handle to the door to economic opportunity, and nearly all the gains women have made in that sphere since the nineteen-sixties were made because of what they did.

  Louis Menand

  Kings, Past, Opportunity

  "The Sex Amendment". www.newyorker.com. July 21, 2014.

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• Dwight Eisenhower has been underestimated, which may relate to his advanced age in office, his somewhat uneven communications skills, and his failure to present a forward-looking vision on the rising issue of civil rights.

  James M Strock

  Communication, Office, Vision

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• The psychedelic issue is a civil rights and civil liberties issue. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind.

  Terence McKenna

  Religious, Issues, Rights

  Terence McKenna (2010). “Food Of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge”, p.255, Random House

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