Civil Rights Activists

"What people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise."

"They were remarkable women and deserve to be remembered that way."

"It was immigration that taught us, it does not matter where you came from, or who your parents were. What counts is who you are."

"You need a core inside you—a core that directs everything you do. You confer with it for guidance. It is not negotiable."

"This country can ill afford to continue to function using less than half of its human resources, less than half its kinetic energy, less than half its brain power."

"Those who hold the public trust must adhere to the highest ethical standards there are. The job requires it, and the public must demand it."

"There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure."

"No ally is better than one’s own race."

"Looking back... I think the North Koreans think they can say whatever they want because no matter what they do, the Americans will never attack them."

"LKP carries on the tradition of President Kim Young Sam (1993-98). Like him it has no firm political principles."

"Dawn will come even if the rooster is strangled."

"Before reading this book, I knew and greatly admired Dave Dellinger. Or so I thought. After reading his remarkable story, my admiration changed to something more like awe. There can be few people in the world who have crafted their lives into something truly inspiring. This autobiography introduces us to one of them, with the simplicity and integrity that characterizes everything Dave has done."

"The way of life that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and is reported to have roasted alive a million people in Tokyo overnight is international and dominates every nation of the world, but we live in the United States, so our struggle is here. With this way of life, death would be more appropriate. There could be no truce or quarter. The prejudices of patriotism, the pressures of our friends and fear of unpopularity and death should not hold us back any longer. It should be total war against the economic and political and social system which is dominant in this country. The American system has been destroying human life in peace and in war, at home and abroad for decades. Now it has produced the growing infamy of atom bombing. Besides these brutal facts, the tidbits of democracy mean nothing. Henceforth, no decent citizen owes one scrap of allegiance (if he ever did) to American law, American custom or American institutions."

"All of his life he really struggled against war. It was interesting, I was in World War II. I was a bombardier in World War II, I wasn’t thinking about pacifism or war. You know, I was imbued like everybody else with the idea of a good war. Dave Dellinger saw beyond that. He saw farther than that. He was a conscientious objector in World War II. Not that he didn’t understand the dangers of fascism, but he thought it was necessary to uphold the ideal of non-violent resistance to fascism, to war."

"I wanted the State of Massachusetts, which was called a Commonwealth but was filled with private wealth and private property, to change, as the early Christians had changed. They "had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need.""

"The execution of Fred Hampton was the gravest domestic crime of the Nixon administration."

"Hampton was instrumental in forming links between the Panthers and organisations of working class Chinese people, whites, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in what he dubbed the Rainbow Coalition."

"This system wants Fred Hampton’s tale to remain untold, his militant memory to fade, his life of service to black folks and the black revolutionary struggle to pass unknown. The media has covered up this recent history, but some remember; perhaps now you will too."

"Papa Doc in Haiti hated everything white. Man, you couldn't put this white paper in front of Papa Doc's face. But, he moved all the white people out and he took over the oppression, he did. Because, no education. If the people had been educated, they'd have said we don't hate the muthafuckin' white people, we hate the oppressor, whether he be white, black, brown or yellow."

"THE COURT: . . . Mr. Dellinger, do you care to say anything? Only in respect to punishment."

"He was so consistent, and his conscience was absolutely seamless. We all had a great mentor and friend who could be called upon in almost any direction relative to human decency and peaceableness, and who fulfilled that enduring saying of Gandhi that the peacemaker belongs where the war is, not where the peace is. David would set out for this or that trouble spot doing what could be done, and daring at times what could not be done. And for this, he will be in our memory as long as we live. Myself and my family and my friends. God bless him, God rest him."

"There has to be an educational program - that's very important. As a matter of fact, it is so important to us that a person has to go through six weeks of our political education before he can consider himself a member of the party, able to even [run our] ideology for the party. Why? Because if they don't have an education, then, they're nowhere. You dig what I'm sayin'? They're nowhere; because they don't even know why they doin' what they doin'. You might get people caught up in the emotions of the movement. You understand me? You might get them caught up because they're poor and they want something. And then if he's not educated, they'll want more and before you know it, they'll be capitalist and before you know it we'll have negro imperialism."

"Why don’t you live for the people. Why don’t you struggle for the people. Why don’t you die for the people."

"So we say—we always say in the that they can do anything they want to to us. We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you’ll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you’re going to have to keep on saying that. You’re going to have to say that I am a proletariat, I am the people. I am not the pigs. You’ve got to make a distinction. And the people are going to have to attack the pigs. The people are going to have to stand up against the pigs. That’s what the Panthers are doing here. That’s what the Panthers are doing all over the world."

"If you ever think about me, and if you ain’t gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don’t want myself on your mind, if you’re not gonna work for the people. Like we always said, if you’re asked to make a commitment at the age of twenty and you say I don’t want to make that commitment only because of the simple reason that I’m too young to die, I wanna live a little bit longer—what you did is, you’re dead already."

"is going through all types of physical and mental torture. But that’s alright, because we said even before this happened, and we’re going to say it after this and after I’m locked up and after everybody’s locked up, that you can jail revolutionaries, but you can’t jail the revolution. You might run a liberator like Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, but you can’t run liberation out of the country. You might murder a like , but you can’t murder freedom fighting, and if you do, you’ll come up with answers that don’t answer, explanations that don’t explain, you’ll come up with conclusions that don’t conclude, and you’ll come up with people that you thought should be acting like pigs that’s acting like people and moving on pigs. And that’s what we’ve got to do. So we’re going to see about Bobby regardless of what these people think we should do, because school is not important and work is not important. Nothing’s more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all."

"We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with , but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’ve stood up and said we’re not going to fight pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution."

"You have to understand that people have to pay the price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not to struggle then god damn it, you don’t deserve to win. Let me say peace to you, if you’re willing to fight for it."

"Murray, Pauli (Davison Douglas, ed., 2d ed. 1997). States' Law on Race and Color, University of Georgia Press."

"Rubin, Leslie and Pauli Murray (1961). The Constitution and Government of Ghana, Sweet & Maxwell, London. African Universities Press, 1964*Murray, Pauli (1970). Dark Testament and other poems, Silvermine, Norwalk, Connecticut,"

"Murray, Pauli (1987). Song In A Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage, Harper & Row, New York City. ."

"On the afternoon of the first day we heard presentations on Black women, racism, and the American legal process. Pauli Murray, one of the senior female attorneys in the country, told us a story which has stayed with me. Thirty years ago, Murray was just out of law school, the only woman in her graduating class at Howard. After great difficulty she secured a job with a New York law firm, and one of her first clients was a woman from Spanish Harlem, who was accused of prostitution. The case went to trial, and the chief witness for the prosecution was the "john." The prosecutor elicited every detail of the sexual transaction and in conclusion asked the witness to identify the woman with whom he had had this sexual association. Without a moment's hesitation the witness identified Pauli Murray. The Washington audience gasped, of course, as she told the story, and then we started to laugh. Pauli Murray laughed with us, saying she could laugh thirty years after the fact, but still, she wanted to be sure that we understood the complete humiliation to which she was subjected. When she rose to move dismissal of the case, the judge ordered her seated, denied the motion, found the woman from Spanish Harlem guilty, and sentenced her to a prison term. It occurred to me later how hard it had been for Pauli Murray to tell us that story, even after thirty years."

"I did go to Howard University, and that was where I was arrested for the first time. I went with two of my friends who were undergrad coeds, downtown in Washington, DC, which was about as segregated as anyplace in the United States at that time. I went to Howard in 1941. This was in '43 though, at the beginning of the year, I think. And we went to a drugstore that had a lunch counter-asked for some hot chocolate. We were told, "We don't serve Negroes." We said, "Well, we'd like to see the manager." "The manager isn't in." And we said, "Well, we have plenty of time. We'll just sit here." And finally they brought the hot chocolate, but they gave us tickets, bills for 25 cents, when it clearly stated on the board that hot chocolate was ten cents a cup, so that's what we put down. And I always like to say that's probably all we had anyway. But, then we walked out and were met by-my recollection is-seven of DC's finest, that is, the police. And they put us in the paddy wagon and took us to jail. After we had this incident, a woman who became a very dear friend, Pauli Murray, was there. She was about ten years older than us coeds. She was in law school, and she knew about CORE that had started. And we formed the Howard's—I think it was called "Civil Rights Committee" and actually opened up a restaurant on the edge of campus in one week, less than a week. I never had such a quick victory, never since that time. It was just a sort of a greasy spoon restaurant, but it was a heady victory for us. We had a picket line; we had a sit–in; lots of people agreed with us, and he capitulated. (By "opened up") I mean we desegregated it."

"We had been led to believe that American education is inferior. We have been impressed with American technology, however, and through your Constitutional law class—the first time we have ever been taught by an American—we have come to change our views. We used to accept without questioning whatever the lecturer said. Through your class we have learned to inquire."

"I want to be an American — without the hyphen."

"Murray, Pauli (1956). Proud Shoes: The Story Of An American Family, Harper & Brothers, New York. ."

"This society is not hospitable to persons of color, women or left-handed people."

"I have accepted the challenge of being a Negro in America and of being an American first."

"If the church ... does not make God's liberation of the oppressed central in its mission and proclamation, how can it rest easy with a condemned criminal as the dominant symbol of its message?"

"By focusing on Scripture, theology is granted the freedom to take seriously its social and political situation without being determined by it. Thus the question is not whether we take seriously our social existence but how and In what way we take It seriously. Whose social situation does our theology represent? For whom do we speak? ... We are forced by Scripture itself to focus on our social existence, but not merely in terms of our own interests. ... There can be no Christian speech about God which does not represent the interest of the victims in our society."

"Any talk about God that fails to make God's liberation of the oppressed its starting point is not Christian."

"According to the Bible, the cross and resurrection of Jesus are God’s decisive acts against injustice, against the humiliation and suffering of the little ones. Indeed, it is because God disclosed himself as the Oppressed One in Jesus that the oppressed now know that their suffering is not only wrong but has been overcome. This new knowledge of God in Jesus grants the oppressed the freedom of fighting against the political structures of servitude which make for pain and suffering."

"Preaching the gospel is not easy in a church defined by the denominational interests of status-seeking clergy and laypersons. Doing Christian theology is difficult in a seminary or university determined by the academic interests of privileged professors and students. Speaking the truth can be politically dangerous in a society defined according to the socio-economic interests of the rich. Preaching the gospel, doing Christian theology, and speaking the truth are interrelated, and neither can be correctly understood apart from the liberation struggles of the poor and marginalized."

"By becoming poor and entrusting divine revelation to a carpenter from Nazareth, God makes clear where one has to be in order to hear the divine word and experience divine presence."

"As ambassadors of Jesus Christ, Christians have no choice but to join the movement of liberation on the side of the poor, fighting against the structures of injustice. Faith in Jesus Christ, therefore, is not only an affirmation that we utter in Sunday worship and at other church gatherings. Faith is a commitment, a deeply felt experience of being called by the Spirit of Christ to bear witness to God's coming liberation by fighting for the freedom of the poor now."

"This is the dialectic of Christian thought: God enters into the social context of human existence and appropriates the ideas and actions of the oppressed as his own. When this event of liberation occurs in thought and praxis, the words and actions of the oppressed become the Word and Action of God. They no longer belong to the oppressed. Indeed, the word of the oppressed becomes God’s Word insofar as the former recognize it not as their own but as given to them through divine grace."

"The dialectic between the social situation of the believer and Scripture and the traditions of the Church is the place to begin the investigation of the question, Who is Jesus Christ for us today? Social context, Scripture, and tradition operate together to enable the people of God to move actively and reflectively with Christ in the struggle of freedom."

"How can Christian theology truly speak of the hope of Jesus Christ, unless that hope begins and ends with the liberation of the poor in the social existence in which theology takes shape? In America this means that there can be no talk about hope in the Christian sense unless it is talk about the freedom of black, red, and brown people."

"What difference does it make that one should "prove" a philosophical point, if that point has nothing to do with spreading freedom throughout the land?"

"Christ is black, therefore, not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor, the despised, and the black are, disclosing that he is with them, enduring their humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberated servants. ... The “blackness of Christ, ”therefore, is not simply a statement about skin color, but rather, the transcendent affirmation that God has not ever, no not ever, left the oppressed alone in struggle. He was with them in Pharaoh’s Egypt, is with them in America, Africa and Latin America, and will come in the end of time to consummate fully their human freedom."