In the racial picture things will never be as they once were. History has reached a turning point, here and over the world.
—Medgar Evers (1925–63) American Civil Rights Activist
I graduated pretty quickly. When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never said a word in public. I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes and I can see those clothes now in my mind’s eye…. But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church. No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes…. Just before I went into the Army I began wondering how long I could stand it. I used to watch the Saturday night sport of white men trying to run down a Negro with their car, or white gangs coming through town to beat up a Negro.
—Medgar Evers (1925–63) American Civil Rights Activist
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American Sociologist, Social Reformer
Where do you think I’d be next week if I didn’t know how to shout and holler and make the public take notice? I’d be poor and I’d probably be down in my home town, washing windows or running an elevator and saying
—Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) American Sportsperson
Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.
—Desmond Tutu (b.1931) South African Clergyman
A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
—Thurgood Marshall (1908–93) American Jurist
Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work
—Angela Davis (b.1944) American Political Activist, Academic
Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.
—Albert Memmi (1920–2020) Tunisian Novelist, Essayist
And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let’s stop all the fight.
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
Racism as a form of skin worship, and as a sickness and a pathological anxiety for America, is so great, until the poor whites—rather than fighting for jobs or education—fight to remain pink and fight to remain white. And therefore they cannot see an alliance with people that they feel to be inherently inferior.
—Jesse Jackson (b.1941) American Baptist Civil Rights Activist, Minister
Our true nationality is mankind.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they’re better than other people. You’re damn right we’re better. We’re better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others. . . .we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we’ll look them in the eye without apology.
—Walker Percy (1916–90) American Novelist
To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
He (Bob Marley) had this idea, it was kind of a virologist idea, he believed he could cure racism and hate, literally cure it by injecting music and love into people’s lives. One day he was scheduled to perform at a peace concert, gunmen came to his house and shot him down. Two days later he walked out on that stage and sang. Somebody asked him why. He said the people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can I? Light up the darkness.
—Bob Marley (1945–81) Jamaican Musician, Singer, Songwriter
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro… this is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
Racism is man’s gravest threat to man—the maximum hatred for a minimum reason.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72) American Jewish Rabbi
Racism rests upon and functions as a kind of seesaw: the persecutor rises by debasing and inferiorizing his victim.
—Albert Memmi (1920–2020) Tunisian Novelist, Essayist
As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.
—Harper Lee (1926–2016) American Novelist
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
—Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American Educationist
The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.
—Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) Romanian-born American Writer, Professor, Political Activist
Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.
—Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American Educationist
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Children’s Books Writer, Short story, Novelist, Poet, Journalist
When we’re unemployed, we’re called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it’s called a depression.
—Jesse Jackson (b.1941) American Baptist Civil Rights Activist, Minister
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