Quotes about Civil rights
Nonviolence, the answer to the Negroes' need, may become the answer to the most desperate need of all humanity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Their objectives included the elimination of Birmingham's rigid segregation. They wanted the right to vote. They wanted jobs and the ability to try on clothes in all the places where they shopped. They wanted public schools opened to all children without regard to the color of their skin.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Why does misery constantly haunt the Negro?
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I had been fighting too long and too hard now against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concerns.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
What we were really doing was withdrawing our cooperation from an evil system, rather than merely withdrawing our economic support from the bus company.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
One old domestic, an influential matriarch to many young relatives in Montgomery, was asked by her wealthy employer, "Isn't this bus boycott terrible?" The old lady responded: "Yes, ma'am, it sure is. And I just told all my young'uns that this kind of thing is white folks' business and we just stay off the buses till they get this whole thing settled.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Most blacks have lost the moral authority to claim the mantle of civil rights because they refuse to stand for what is right.
- Jesse Lee Peterson