Mississippi Quotes - Page 6

• The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around...But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.'

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  New York, Stars, Dark

  I've Been to the Mountaintop, delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee

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• It is only when we speak what is right that we stand a chance at night of being blown to bits in our homes. Can we call this a free country, when I am afraid to go to sleep in my own home in Mississippi?... I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be a part of setting the Negro free in Mississippi.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Country, Home, Sleep

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• What are we going to say if tomorrow it occurs to some African state to send its agents into Mississippi and to kidnap one of the leaders of the segregationist movement there? And what are we going to reply if a court in Ghana or the Congo quotes the Eichmann case as precedent?

  Hannah

  Ghana, Leader, Movement

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• . . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and---from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.

  William Faulkner

  Christian, Fall, Light

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• If I poured all the lies I had told into the Mississippi, the river would rise and flood the city.

  Ruta Sepetys

  Lying, Cities, Rivers

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• I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, Look how far weve come, because we hadnt come very far, to say the least. Although Jacksons population was half white and half black, I didnt have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

  Kathryn Stockett

  School, White, Black

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• The Mississippi Delta is not always dark with rain. Some autumn mornings, the sun rises over Moon Lake, or Eagle, or Choctaw, or Blue, or Roebuck, all the wide, deep waters of the state, and when it does, its dawn is as rosy with promise and hope as any other.

  Lewis Nordan

  Morning, Rain, Autumn

  Lewis Nordan (2003). “Wolf Whistle”, p.149, Algonquin Books

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• I used to come out here every Fourth of July as a child to picnic and to swim on the island, to tour the fort and wander through it. And all of that time, I never knew anything about the presence of black soldiers on the island. And so, for me, this was a way of trying to tell another history, a lost or a forgotten or a little-known history about these black soldiers who played an important part in American history.” Trethewey said.
  Coincidentally, she was born “exactly 100 years to the day that Mississippi celebrated the first Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1866.

  Natasha Trethewey

  Memorial Day, Children, Islands

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• The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Humorous, Cat

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.706, Jazzybee Verlag

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• When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn't be here. You're going to Mississippi to create social change and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children. Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it at which point they can become human too.

  Bayard Rustin

  Inspirational Love, Children, Men

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• I love being so tight on people in close-ups that the veins in their eyes look like the Mississippi River.

  Sylvester Stallone

  Eye, Love Is, Rivers

  "New again: Sylvester Stallone". Interview with Pat Hackett, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 2, 2015.

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• Ninety-nine percent of girls want to be models because they believe it will mean that they are the most beautiful women in the world. They think that they will wear expensive clothes, makes loads of money, travel a lot and have a rock star for a boyfriend. This never interested me. I didn't want anyone to scream out my name. I wanted to make art, to create an image with a photographer. And yes, I wanted to get out of Clinton, Mississippi - a small town that was so closed-minded you can't even imagine.

  Crystal Renn

  Beautiful, Girl, Art

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• My son's an idiot. His teacher asked him to spell Mississippi. He asked which one? The river or the state?

  Rodney Dangerfield

  Teacher, Son, Rivers

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• I always wanted to grow up fast. I longed for more than the Mississippi Delta could give.

  Charley Pride

  Growing Up, Mississippi Delta, Giving

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• It took the United States Army to get one Negro into the University of Mississippi; it took troops to get a few Negroes in the white schools at Little Rock and another dozen places in the South.

  Malcolm X

  School, Army, Rocks

  Source: teachingamericanhistory.org

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• There were colored and white waiting rooms everywhere, from doctor's offices to the bus stations, as people may already know. But there were actually colored windows at the post office in, for example, Pensacola, Florida. And there were white and colored telephone booths in Oklahoma. And there were separate windows where white people and black people would go to get their license plates in Indianola, Mississippi. And there were even separate tellers to make your deposits at the First National Bank in Atlanta.

  Isabel Wilkerson

  Doctors, Florida, Waiting Rooms

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• [My mother] tried so hard to make life easy for us. Those are the things that forced me to try to do something different and when this Movement came to Mississippi I still feel it is one of the greatest things that ever happened because only a person living in the State of Mississippi knows what it is like to suffer; knows what it is like to be hungry; knows what it is like to have no clothing to wear.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Mother, Suffering, Trying

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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• The only thing I really feel is necessary is that the black people, not only in Mississippi, will have to actually upset this applecart. What I mean by that is, so many things are under the cover that will have to be swept out and shown to this whole world, not just to America. This thing they say of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is all on paper.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Mean, Home, Land

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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• This problem is not only in Mississippi. During the time I was in the Convention in Atlantic City, I didn't get any threats from Mississippi. The threatening letters were from Philadelphia, Chicago and other big cities.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Cities, Philadelphia, Letters

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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• I used to question this for years - what did our kids actually fight for? They would go in the service and go through all of that and come right out to be drowned in a river in Mississippi. I found this hypocrisy is all over America.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Kids, Fighting, Years

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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• The 20th of March in 1964, I went before the Secretary of State to qualify to run as an official candidate for Congress from the 2nd Congressional District, and it was easier for me to qualify to run than it was for me to pass the literacy test to be a registered voter. And we had four people to qualify and run in the June primary election be we didn't have enough Negroes registered in Mississippi.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Running, June, People

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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• The only thing we took out was the Constitution of the State of Mississippi and the interpretation of the Constitution. We had 63,000 people registered on the Freedom Registration form. And we tried from every level to go into the regular Democratic Party medium. We tried from the precinct level. The 16th of June when they were holding precinct meetings all across the state, I was there and there was eight of us there to attend the meeting, and they had the door locked at 10 o'clock in the morning. This is what's happening in the State of Mississippi.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Morning, Party, June

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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• You can tell this by the program the federal government had to train 2,400 tractor drivers. They would have trained Negro and white together, but this man, Congressman Jamie Whitten, voted against it and everything that was decent. So, we've got to have somebody in Washington who is concerned about the people of Mississippi.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Men, White, People

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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• After we testified before the Credentials Committee in Atlantic City, their Mississippi representative testified also. He said I got 600 votes but when they made the count in Mississippi, I was told I had 388 votes. So actually it is no telling how many votes I actually got.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Cities, Atlantic City, Vote

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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• The Mississippi is not the only river. There's the Tallahatchie and the Big Black. People have been put in the river year after year, these things been happening.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Years, Rivers, People

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

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