Civil Rights Quotes

Most popular civil rights quotes

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

America apathy equality injustice

The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

race

It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing. - Andrew Young quote.
It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.

idealist

Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black. - Shirley Chisholm quote.
Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.

African-Americans women

I glory in conflict that I may hereafter exult in victory. - Frederick Douglass quote.
I glory in conflict that I may hereafter exult in victory.

victory

America has put a tight shoe on the Negro and now he has a callus on his soul. - Dick Gregory quote.
America has put a tight shoe on the Negro and now he has a callus on his soul.

America African-Americans

The haughty American nation ... makes the Negro clean its boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the Negro by the fact that he is a bootblack. - George Bernard Shaw quote.
The haughty American nation ... makes the Negro clean its boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the Negro by the fact that he is a bootblack.

racism African-Americans America

After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming. - Malcolm X quote.
After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery. - Frederick Douglass quote.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
An American Negro isn't a man — he's a walking defense mechanism. - Frank Yerby quote.
An American Negro isn't a man — he's a walking defense mechanism.
The Negro was invented in America.
Some of the best pretending in the world is done in front of white folks.
This (America) is the red man's country by natural right, and the black man's by virtue of his sufferings and toil.