Political Activists

"The bottom truth is that Governor Altgeld is of that type whose brains and character alike do not make it possible for their personal success to suffocate their love of justice. He is a man whom the trusts, corporations, and concentrated millionairism of the country have found it impossible to bend, break, or seduce. If such men as Altgeld the Democrat and Pingree the Republican survive, monopoly will perish and monopoly by a sure instinct of self-preservation has set itself to destroy them by ridicule, slander, and by every means of financial and political assault. One of the most regrettable features of public opinion in this campaign is that so many of the American people have allowed themselves to be played upon by these sinister interests who are catering to every prejudice and using every ingenuity of misrepresentation to destroy public confidence in the few public men who are standing like giants on guard for the public."

"Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty."

"Nature is rich; but everywhere man, the heir of nature, is poor."

"If our civilization is destroyed, as Macaulay predicted, it will not be by his barbarians from below. Our barbarians come from above. Our great money-makers have sprung in one generation into seats of power kings do not know."

"Our system, so fair in its theory and so fertile in its happiness and prosperity in its first century, is now, following the fate of systems, becoming artificial, technical, corrupt; and, as always happens in human institutions, after noon, power is stealing from the many to the few."

"Believing wealth to be good, the people believed the wealthy to be good. But, again in history, power has intoxicated and hardened its possessors, and pharaohs are bred in counting-rooms as they were in palaces."

"I spend every morning at my desk working on a book about the Trusts but my progress seems lamentably slow. However, it "do move." The worst of it is the work is really so distasteful. It keeps me poking about and scavengering in piles of filthy human greed and cruelty almost too nauseous to handle. Nothing but the sternest sense of duty and the conviction that men must understand the vices of our present system before they will be able to rise to a better, drives me back to my desk every day."

"Tejana socialist labor leader and political activist Sara Estela Ramirez would not live to participate in El Primer Congreso Mexicanista held the following year. Ramirez's ideas, however, would resonate in the words of her compañeras. Composed of South Texas residents, this Congreso was the first civil rights assembly among Spanish-speaking people in the United States. With delegates representing community organizations and interests from both sides of the border, its platform addressed discrimination, land loss, and lynching. Women delegates, such as Jovita Idar, Soldedad Peña, and Hortensia Moncaya, spoke to the concerns of Tejanos and Mexicanos."

"Nations disappear and lineage sinks into oblivion once the national language is forgotten; that is why the Aztecs do not exist anymore as a nation. Rome had so much influence in all the nations that it had conquered because of its language, and if the Jews are not a nation today it is because each one of them speaks the language of the land they inhabit. We do not say that English should not be taught to Mexican-Texan children, it is very fortunate, we do say that it should not be forgotten to teach them Spanish, just as arithmetic and grammar is useful to them, English is useful to those who live among those who speak that language. We are all shaped by our surroundings: we love the things that we have seen since our childhood and we believe in what was infused into our spirit since the first years of our lives; therefore, if in the American schools that our children attend they are taught the biography of Washington and not that of Hidalgo and if instead of the glorious acts of Juárez they are told of the accomplishments of Lincoln, no matter how noble and just they might be, that child will never know the glories of his country, he will not love it, and will even look with indifference at the countrymen of his parents."

"The working woman, by recognizing her rights, raises her head in pride and gets ready for the struggle. The time of her degradation has passed, she is no longer the slave sold for a few coins, she is no longer the servant of, but the equal to man, his partner, by his being her natural protector, and not her lord and master."

"It is certain that we are in the country of business and that "time is money," but although history and geography are not indispensable to earn a living, they are good for the preservation of our patriotism."

"There is no doubt that education elevates the woman. The woman who possesses some knowledge always tries to keep herself at a certain moral level that helps her greatly in the fight for life, by making her better, more pure, and by guiding her steps along the path of virtue."

"Men flatter the vanity of those women who seek praise, who always want to be complimented and enthroned because they know their weak side, but the woman who is pure, with her own chastity she is protected, because men, no matter how uneducated they are, always respect the woman who shows herself to be worthy of respect. The woman should always try to acquire useful and beneficial knowledge, because in these modern times she has wide horizons; the sciences, industries, workshops, and even her very home demand her better abilities, her perseverance and consistency in her work, and her influence and aid for everything that is progress and advancement for humanity."

"Chicana feminist activities in the 1904 to 1920 period were channeled through civil rights activities and labor organization work. Some outstanding women were Jovita Idar, a journalist and civil rights worker from Laredo, Texas; Soledad Peña, orator and educator; María Renteria; and María Villarreal. These women were speakers and participants in a historical civil rights conference, the Primer Congreso Mexicanista. On October 15, 1911 they also founded the Liga Femenil Mexicanista."

"Scholar Jose Limón explains that through the newspaper, the Idars launched a "campaign of journalistic resistance" in which the press and its contributors actively fought the "social conditions oppressing Texas-Mexicans""

"The Mexican children in Texas need to be educated. Neither our government nor that of the U.S.A. can do anything for them, and there remains no other recourse than to undertake it through our own efforts, in exchange for not continuing to be despised and humiliated by the foreigners who surround us."

"with the Mexican Revolution raging just miles away across the border, Idar's world was in flux. She and her counterparts were realizing the need to work outside the home as a means of supporting their families as well as an opportunity to gain a new sense of direction and purpose in their lives."

"As La Crónica reports, Idar's El Estudiante was "a bilingual weekly magazine... dedicated exclusively to school interests and issues" ("El Estudiante" 1)." The sheer existence of this publication signals Idar's dedicated investment in educational issues on the border and, most interestingly, her attempt to initiate a cross-cultural pedagogical conversation between both English- and Spanish-speaking writers and readers."

"At the turn of the century, Sara Estela Ramírez, the Villarreal sisters, Leonor Villegas de Magnón, Jovita Idar and the staff members of La Voz de la Mujer and Pluma Roja were organic intellectuals of their times who revealed different discursive positionings of women within their societies, positionings informed by the master narratives of nationalism, religion and anarchism. Until now these women's work as publishers and their written contributions have remained virtually unrecognized. Either because of political affiliations or gender discrimination, their work has not been recognized in Mexico. In the United States, these factors, as well as linguistic biases, have relegated their work to oblivion. These women's stories and their publishing efforts, nonetheless, capture the realities of a people, the significance of whose daily existence transcends the limitations imposed by political and national borders."

"A Brave Journalist:While many mexicanas fought for justice against the dictatorship in Mexico, others struggled against Anglo injustice in Texas. Born in Laredo to an activist family, Jovita Idar soon joined the struggle against racist discrimination inflicted on tejanos. She was enraged by school segregation, lower wages than Anglos, and horrible lynchings. Texas Rangers were responsible for 5,000 tejanos killed in 1914-19, a state investigation revealed. Working at La Crónica and three other Texas newspapers, Jovita exposed the abuse. When Rangers came to close down La Crónica, she stood in the doorway blocking them. Her courage extended to many other fronts. She also worked as a teacher and served as a nurse in the Mexican revolution."

"It is eminently fitting and proper that we, as Americans, celebrate the birth of the man who, by a single stroke of his pen — albeit, a reluctant stroke — gave the Negro the right to stand with his face to the sun and proclaim to the world, “I am a man!” It is our right and our duty to commemorate his birth, to mourn his death, to revere the twelfth of February as a holiday, to come together to lay laurel wreaths on his tomb. But we Americans of the darker skin have another day as dear to us as the twelfth of February, less well known, perhaps, but which we should acclaim with shouts of joy, even as we acclaim the day which has grown familiar by long usage. That day is the birthday of Frederick Douglass. Lincoln and Douglass; Douglass and Lincoln! Names ever linked in history and in the hearts of a grateful race as the two great emancipators, the two men above all other Americans, fearless, true, brave, strong, the western ideal of manhood. Is it not fitting that their natal days should come within a few hours of each other. Is it not right that when the Negro child lifts its eyes to the American flag on Lincoln’s day e should, at the same time, think of the man whose thunderous voice never ceased in its denunciation of wrong, its acclamation of right, its spurring the immortal Lincoln to be true to his highest ideals; its sorrowful wail when he seemed to fail the nation? Verily, on this day of days we of the darker hued skin have a richer heritage than our white brothers — ours the proud possession of two heroes, theirs of but one. . . ."

"Every school boy in the nation knows Abraham Lincoln — his gaunt figure, his seamed and pain lined face, with its sweetness and patience, are familiar to their eyes. His life, with its romance of poverty and toil, its tragic sorrow and tragic end, are as close to the heart of the nation as the stories of the Bible and the Christ-child. The utterances of Lincoln, the anecdotes of his life, the whimsical stories of his early days and his quaint humor furnish a never ending theme of interest to the American school boy. His sublime speeches; the delicate pathos of his first inaugural address; the splendid, stern, yet tender beauty of the second inaugural address are recited from thousands of school platforms annual, while the Gettysburg speech is as well known in America as the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes, and I deem it no sacrilege to say that in point of literary beauty it stands with them. It is graven in bronze in the national cemeteries, on school walls, in the halls of colleges and universities. It is recited semi-annually by the majority of the school boys in the country, and it is right that it should be, for is not Lincoln the nation’s idol, the American ideal?"

"Frederick Douglass once said: Any man may say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. If that were true in the past century, in the early seventies, how much more is it true today"

"Yet how many Negro youths in the land know as much of the ideal of Negro manhood, Frederick Douglass? If Lincoln is the American idol, so is Douglass the Negro’s idol. If Lincoln’s was a romance of life, with its toilsome youth culminating in a splendid manhood, attaining the highest gift which the nation could be stow, how much more is Douglass’ life a romance? The slave, beaten, starved, stripped, fleeing from slavery at the most deadly peril, to become in his later manhood the guest of nobles and kings, the cynosure of the nation’s eyes, the friend of this same Lincoln, the great man of the century? If Lincoln’s utterances are inspiring, calling in clarion notes for right and justice and truth, so much more are Douglass’ inspiring to us, calling for manhood and strength and power. For he was no soft-tongued apologist,/He spoke straightforward, fearlessly, uncowed;/The sunlight of his truth dispelled the mist,/And set in bold relief each dark-hued cloud;/To sin and crime he gave their proper hue,/And hurled at evil what was evil’s due."

"The Negro youth of the land recites the Gettysburg speech, and it is right that he should do so; but does he know Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” The Negro youth of the land admires Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address, but does he know Douglass’ splendid tribute to the man who wrote the Second Inaugural address, when the freedmen of this country erected the Lincoln monument at Washington? The Negro youth rolls over his tongue the witty epigrams of the mighty Lincoln, but has he been made familiar with some of the pithy aphorisms of his own Douglass?"

"Abraham Lincoln does not need the tribute we give him today; the world is paying him tributes greater than ours, more glorious and resounding. But the sweeter praise which we pay him is that of a race, profiting by the lesson of a life. Fame has written Lincoln’s name with the greatest men of the world with the statesmen, with the wisest of monarchs, with the prince of republicans — and placed his laurel wreath higher than the rest. But it remains for the descendants of slaves to give him what no man in history has ever had — the divine breath of gratitude, the determination to make the world see, centuries hence, that he was not mistaken in his greatest deed, his life work, his martyrdom."

"The life of service; the life of unselfish giving — this must Livingstone’s life mean to us. Unselfish, ungrudging lavishing of life and soul, even to the last drop of heart’s blood. Service that does not hesitate because the task seems small, or the waiting weary; service that does not fear to be of no account in the eyes of the world. Truly, indeed, might Wordsworth’s apostrophe to Milton be ascribed to him: “Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart;/Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;/Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,/So didst thou travel on life’s common way/In cheerful godliness, and yet thy heart/The lowliest duties on itself did lay.”"

"To you, of the younger generation, what a marvel, what a world of meaning in those words — “I have been taught patience.” We, who fret and chafe because the whole world will not bend its will to our puny strivings, and turn its whole course that we might have our unripe desires fulfilled, should read and re-read of the man who could wait, because he knew that time and all eternity would be bent to meet his desires in time."

"Such a man was Livingstone, not afraid to be meek in order to be great; not afraid to “fear God and work bard;” not ashamed to stoop in order that he might raise others to his high estate. He gave the world a continent and a conscience; with the lavishness almost of Nature herself he bestowed cataracts and rivers, lakes and mountains, forests and valleys, upon his native land. He stirred the soul of the civilized world to the atrocities of the slave trade, and he made it realize that humanity may be found even in the breast of a savage. When he laid down his life in the forest he loved, he laid upon the altar of humanity and science the costliest and sweetest sacrifice that it had known for many a weary age."

"One idea mastered him — to give Africa to the world."

"Hamilton Wright Mabie says that the question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence, and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has. In all history there are few men who have answered this question. Among them none have answered it more effectively than he whom we have gathered to honor to-night — David Livingstone. The term “social service,” which is on every one’s lips now, was as yet uncoined when David Livingstone was born. But it was none the less true, that without overmuch prating of the ideal which is held up to the man of to-day as the only one worth striving for, the sturdy pioneers of Livingstone’s day and ilk realized to the highest the ideal of man’s duty to his fellow-man."

"Dear to his heart was Lincoln, the Emancipator, an ideal hero whom he consistently revered. Away to the southwest from Kamolondo is a large lake which discharges its waters by the important river, Lomami, into the great Lualaba. To this lake, known as the Chobungo by the natives, Dr. Livingstone gave the name of Lincoln, in memory of him for whom your noble institution was named. This was done because of a vivid impression produced on his mind by hearing a portion of Lincoln’s inauguration speech from an English pulpit, which related to the causes that induced him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. To the memory of the man whom Livingstone revered he has contributed a monument more durable than brass or stone."

"who knew and understood them as human beings, and not as beasts, the slavery trade was, as he expressed it, “the open sore of Africa.” Over and again he voiced his belief that the Negro freeman was a hundred time more valuable than the slave. He repeatedly enjoined those who had the fitting out of his expeditions not to send him slaves to accompany him on his journeys, but freemen, as they were more trustworthy. He voiced the fundamental truth that he who is his own master is he who obeys and believes in his master. The slave trade in Africa was dealt its death-blow by Dr. Livingstone."

"But Frederick Douglass, whom we honor equally, has not yet had the full meed of his praise, and we celebrate the passing of his natal day with a finer appreciation of what he has done for us, and of what his life will mean, not only to the men who were his contemporaries, nor yet to us of a later generation, but to the race of the future; to the children yet unborn. History has not yet given him his rightful place on its pages, but the history of. tomorrow will place him where he should be — with the courageous, the wise, the far-seeing. It remains for us, his own people, to pour out at his altar the incense he deserves, the praise he merits; to let his life be a beacon to light us to that higher, truer patriotism — the fearlessness of real manhood."

"Lincoln and Douglass; Douglass and Lincoln! May their names ever be welded into one memory in the hearts of every Negro in the land!"

"People need room to learn, to reflect, to strengthen, and you need a strong organization to do that"

"This is yet another in a relentless barrage of attacks to block women's access to constitutionally protected abortion services"

"The consequences of a Roe reversal would be devastating. Over 20 states would prohibit abortion outright. Eleven states —including Mississippi — currently have trigger bans on the books which would instantaneously ban abortion if Roe is overturned"

"The Constitution protects every woman's right to make her own decisions about whether and when to end a pregnancy"

"No one should be forced to delay health care because politicians have the audacity to presume to know what is best for a woman and her family."

"There is no question that today’s decision will harm those who already face the greatest barriers to health care"

"The new thing I want to add to knowledge is: I want to connect culture and education, science and technology. I have seen the link between culture and science, culture and education, culture and technology, and that’s what I think I can establish."

"Yes, the gods knew what they were doing. They always joined together in marriage people of opposing qualities and thus ensured harmony."

"I’m not a feminist, I’m a humanist. Being in Women studies and being in African Studies and being a woman, you often find this discussion coming to you."

"You have to plant all the seed, give them all the knowledge you have, and all the love you can give; make sure that they know love from you so that they can extend it to others in their life."

"After the publication of the book, I was sponsored to visit the U.S. as part of the international visitors program. The USIS (United States Information Service) in Nigeria organised for me to travel to several U.S. universities to give lectures and do readings from my work."

"I am a humanist, and as a humanist, anything concerning the human condition, the progress of man, civilisation, the human thinking, knowledge especially, are some of the things that I take very personally."

"The thing is that any work of art that has something in it will always challenge people: Some, in one respect; the others, in another respect. But you will find out that people keep on going back to that work because there is always something challenging in it."

"Because thinkers are those people who are able to pierce into the future and catch glimpses of light and bring it down. Many people do not often see what you are seeing until years and years later."

"There is a new discipline that is called Fundamental Studies and this is an area where you think deeply about the origin of things. You don’t deal with effects; you deal with causes."