Racial Segregation Quotes

• The tragedy of the civil rights movement is that just as it achieved the beginning of the end of racial segregation, white educated elites became swept up in the glamour of the sexual revolution.

  Maggie Gallagher

  Rights, White, Racism

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• In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Christian, Struggle, Love Is

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• I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

  George C. Wallace

  Dust, Tyrants, Feet

  First Inaugural Speech as Governor of Alabama, January 1963.

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• Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Vengeance, Segregation, Public Education

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• Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!

  George C. Wallace

  Forever, Tomorrow, Segregation

  First Inaugural Speech as Governor of Alabama, January 1963.

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• Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Covered Up, Evil, Slavery

  Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood, delivered 26 February 1965

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• People have said over the years that the reason I did not give up my seat was because I was tired. I did not think of being physically tired. My feet were not hurting. I was tired in a different way. I was tired of seeing so many men treated as boys and not called by their proper names or titles. I was tired of seeing children and women mistreated and disrespected because of the color of their skin. I was tired of Jim Crow laws, of legally enforced racial segregation.

  Rosa Parks

  Hurt, Children, Giving Up

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• There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Religious, Luxury, People

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• People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the "whites only" signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery.

  Assata Shakur

  People, Colonialism, Slavery

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• I grew up in the South. I grew up in the days of legalized segregation. And, so, whether you called it legal racial segregation or you called it apartheid, it was the same injustice.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Injustice, Segregation, Grew

  "American scholar recalls honoring Nelson Mandela with a quilt of connection". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. December 9, 2013.

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• Harry Truman was courageous enough to command that racial segregation be ended in the military. I was serving in a submarine in the U.S. Navy at the time he issued the order.

  Jimmy Carter

  Military, Order, Harry Truman

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• The new racism: Racism without 'racists.' Today, racial segregation and division often result from habits, policies, and institutions that are not explicitly designed to discriminate. Contrary to popular belief, discrimination or segregation do not require animus. They thrive even in the absence of prejudice or ill will. It's common to have racism without racists.

  Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

  Ill Will, Racism, Prejudice

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• Belief in Some One's right to punish you is the fate of all children in Judaic-Christian culture. But nowhere else, perhaps, have the rich seed-beds of Western homes found such a growing climate for guilt as is produced in the South by the combination of a warm moist evangelism and racial segregation.

  Lillian Smith

  Christian, Children, Home

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• In America, there is no racial segregation. I'm not sure I'm quite familiar with this phrase.

  Trevor Noah

  America, Phrases, Segregation

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• In its heart, America knew that racial segregation was wrong. In its heart, America knows that human life begins before birth.

  F. LaGard Smith

  Heart, America, Birth

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• What used to be racial segregation now mirrors itself in class segregation, this great sorting (has) taken place. It creates its own politics. There are some communities where not only do I not know poor people, I don't even know people who have trouble paying the bills at the end of the month. I just don't know those people. And so there's less sense of investment in those children.

  Barack Obama

  Children, Taken, Mirrors

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• Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate a city with a history of racial segregation.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Space, Cities, People

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Aleksandar Hemon". Interview with Rachel Dewoskin, therumpus.net. April 14, 2013.

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• One of life's intriguing paradoxes is that hierarchical social order makes cheap rents and outré artists' colonies possible. Raffish bohemian neighborhoods flourished in the days of racial segregation; under integration the artistic poor have no safe places in which to create.... If America lacks a vigorous culture it is partly because studios and ateliers have become crack houses.

  Florence King

  Artist, America, Order

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• For some of us it seems like yesterday when Ike was in the White House, the U.S. Senate censured Joe McCarthy, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public school was unconstitutional.

  Malcolm Forbes

  School, White, Yesterday

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• I was born in Columbia in 1954, the year the Supreme Court invalidated racial segregation in public schools. I visited frequently but did not live there.

  Randall Kennedy

  School, Years, Segregation

  Randall Kennedy (2013). “For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law”, p.3, Vintage

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• There could be no more powerful argument against mixing religion and government than the success of independent African American churches in placing racial segregation and discrimination on a reluctant nation's social agenda. Would black churches have been able to take the lead in the struggle had they been dependent on funds doled out for 'faith-based initiatives' . . . ?

  Susan Jacoby

  Powerful, Struggle, Independent

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• There's five factors or characteristics of places where kids from poor backgrounds don't do very well. And those are places that have more economic and racial segregation, places with more income inequality.

  Gwen Ifill

  Kids, Income, Segregation

  Source: www.pbs.org

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