Civil Rights Activists

"It is past time for New Hampshire to join the rest of America."

"In the lawsuit, I've been accused of requiting and sequestering these items, but the reality is that my daddy's bible and Nobel Prize are hidden in plain sight. They know where they are, but perhaps God put them beyond their reach so that they don't misplace what has been bestowed and entrusted to us as custodians."

"It is, deep in my soul, difficult to place what my father described as precious heirlooms under the custody of the government, even if only for a season. Yet, I recognize that justice and righteousness are not always aligned, and there is often a disconnect between God's law and man's law."

"The men who do the work of piety and charity in our churches, the men who administer our school system, the men who own and till their own farms, the men who perform skilled labor in the shops, the soldiers, the men who went to war and stayed all through, the men who paid the debt and kept the currency sound and saved the nation’s honor, the men who saved the country in war and have made it worth living in peace, commonly and as a rule, by the natural law of their being find their places in the Republican party. While the old slave-owner and slave-driver, the saloon keeper, the ballot box stuffer, the Ku Klux Klan, the criminal class of the great cities, the men who cannot read or write, commonly and as a rule, by the natural law of their being, find their congenial place in the Democratic party."

"He embodied all the virtues of the classic New Englander and few of the vices. His loyalty was granite-ribbed; he revered the Constitution and all the institutions born and reared under it. He was proud of the United States, but his heart belonged to Massachusetts. In his mouth the name took on a beauty and an emotion which never ceased to stir me-Westerner that I was. Combined with his patriotic loyalties was a passionate devotion to classic literature-Greek, Roman, English. He knew yards of Homer and Virgil, as well as of the greatest of the early English writers, and not infrequently at our Sunday morning breakfasts he would repeat long passages in his sonorous voice. "Earning money is hateful to me," he said. "Never in all my life before have I undertaken a thing I did not want to do simply for money. Some things I like to do, believe that I can do better than I could do anything else. I never was such a donkey before. There are so many things I long to do; one of them is to learn Italian well enough to read Dante and Boccaccio and Ariosto in the original; and I want to commit Homer to memory. I would like to have my head packed with Greek." The Senator's Sunday morning talks were rich with anecdotes of New England types. He had his antipathies-Margaret Fuller Ossoli was one of them."

"I have certainly never known anyone for whom life at seventy was more joyous and full. He hated weakness, as well as everything that impaired his dignity, his self-reliance. He was a true untouchable and would fall into a rage if friend or stranger offered to assist him."

"Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your men when they landed on those islands with benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries can not eradicate."

"... this was the Senator on a vacation, the Senator of our Sunday morning's breakfast. Take him when public affairs were in a serious tangle, and he was glum, unapproachable. He suffered deeply over the trend to imperialism after the Spanish-American War. To save Cuba from the maladministration of Spain, to watch over her until she had learned to govern herself seemed to him a noble expression of Americanism, but to annex lands on the other side of the globe for commercial purposes only, as he believed, was to be false to all our ideals. He had the early American conviction that minding one's own business was even more important abroad than at home. He wanted no entangling alliances, and in those days following the treaty of Paris he feared as never before for the country. His greatest speech against the advancing imperialism was made in April of 1900. At the head of the printed copy of his speech distributed by the Senate he placed these sentences: “No right under the Constitution to hold Subject States. To every People belongs the right to establish its own government in its own way. The United States can not with honor buy the title of a dispossessed tyrant, or crush a Republic." I was learning something of what responsibility means for a man charged with public service, of the clash of personalities, of ambitions, judgments, ideals."

"As the American youth for uncounted centuries shall visit the capital of his country—strongest, richest, freest, happiest of the nations of the earth—from the stormy coast of New England, from the luxuriant regions of the Gulf, from the lakes, from the prairie and the plain, from the Golden Gate, from far Alaska—he will admire the evidences of its grandeur and the monuments of its historic glory. He will find there rich libraries and vast museums, and great cabinets which show the product of that matchless inventive genius of America, which has multiplied a thousand fold the wealth and comfort of human life. He will see the simple and modest portal through which the great line of the Republic's chief magistrates have passed at the call of their country to assume an honor surpassing that of emperors and kings, and through which they have returned, in obedience to her laws, to take their place again as equals in the ranks of their fellow-citizens. He will stand by the matchless obelisk which, loftiest of human structures, is itself but the imperfect type of the loftiest of human characters. He will gaze upon the marble splendors of the Capitol, in whose chambers are enacted the statutes under which the people of a continent dwell together in peace, and the judgments are rendered which keep the forces of states and nation alike within their appointed bounds. He will look upon the records of great wars and the statues of great commanders. But, if he know his country's history, and consider wisely the sources of her glory, there is nothing in all these which will so stir his heart as two fading and time-soiled papers, whose characters were traced by the hand of the fathers a hundred years ago. They are the original records of the acts which devoted this nation forever to equality, to education, to religion, and to liberty. One is the Declaration of Independence, the other the Ordinance of 1787."

"You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives–the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture."

"Your practical statesmanship which disdains to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of the Revolution or of the Civil War as models, has looked in some cases to Spain for your example. I believe–nay, I know–that in general our officers and soldiers are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare with a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty."

"“We can throw up our hands in despair, we can write off the millions that are homeless, or we can choose to believe in a different way and we can do our share to bring that world into being.”"

"Our mother is coming home and we are so grateful and so thankful that this is happening."

"I am a 100 percent, dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying believer in the dream."

"“We today have that same power if we but choose it, but choose it we must. What makes each of us unique is the individual choices we make. There will always be doubters, those who prefer inaction. I have heard it all, but I am still a believer in the dream. I choose to believe.”"

"And we wonder why we have problems with homelessness in our country. We wonder why we're floundering in education. We have got to take a look at reversing the priorities of this country."

"To this day, my heart skips a beat every time I hear one of those special bulletins."

""She lived with a lot of the trauma of our struggle. The movement was in her DNA.”"

"“For some of you, the civil rights movement might seem like ancient history, but it was live, in living color.”"

"He knew in 1968 that while this was a beautiful symbol of hope and possibility, it indeed was only the beginning. For after they joined hands what then were they going to do? Yes, he was dreaming again of marching on Washington, but this time the intent was to stay there not just for a day, not just for speeches and singing but to engage in a campaign of massive civil disobedience to try and stop, nonviolently, the functioning of the national government until the cause of the poor became this nation’s first priority—until all people were guaranteed a decent job, at a decent income, until we stopped the killing of Asians abroad in the Vietnam war and turned to attend to the very desperate needs of our people within our shores. That was the last dream. And if you understand that dream, if you understand that for the last six months of his life Martin Luther King Jr. was not only talking about but actively organizing native Americans, Hispanics, poor whites, blacks, people from all across this nation who had for so long been denied; if you realize how threatening that was, perhaps you will understand why the bullet came, perhaps where it came from."

"I chose to dream and act on my dreams, following the example that my father taught. To live with this dream may be crazy, it may be foolish, but to live without it would be a nightmare."

"In time, it became increasingly apparent to me that my presence in Arizona would be misconstructed by some to be contrary to the goals and tactics of proponents of the King holiday. I believe that the greater good would be served by my support of this boycott as it represents a growing national conscience...Because of my agreement with the goals of these efforts and my wish to avoid even the appearance of any difference, however much imagined, I have decided not to appear in Arizona at this time."

"During the era of segregation a term was used to describe the racist separate system that was primarily intact in the South, although of course there were vestiges of it all across the rest of the country—it was called Jim Crow. Well, in 1989 I am pleased to say Jim Crow is dead, but as has been proven by incidents that happened in Forsyth County in Georgia, Howard Beach in New York, the community of Overton in Miami, just by cross burnings on college campuses, and by racial epithets being written on the walls of many of our college facilities. These incidents and so many more that are terrifying really, when we stop and think that they are still occurring in this country, point to the fact that while Jim Crow is dead his slightly more sophisticated first born son, J. Crow, Esquire, is alive and kicking. We as black people, we as women, we as humanity have not reached the promised land. We are still wandering around bumping into each other in the wilderness. The dream, that magnificent dream, pursued so fiercely by my father, is still only a dream. Racism, sexism, injustices, inequities of all shapes and sizes remain and we have to find a semblance of real peace, not the kind of peace where everything is wonderful on the surface but things are boiling underneath. I am talking about peace with justice. My father’s utterance rings persistently—either we will learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools."

"We as Americans memorialize and honor symbols of heroic deeds done on the battlefields of war and violence. So should we honor those cosmic travelers who have given their lives for the struggle for peace and justice. We have thousands of monuments to men at war, at long last we have the opportunity to celebrate the life of a man of peace who was one of our own. This accomplishment is a moment of triumph—but not for Martin Luther King Jr., he wouldn’t have cared one way or other, his was a very self-effacing spirit."

"The Civil Rights Movement was not a mirage; it was not a documentary; it was not even a television special; it was live and in living color. It should not surprise us that it was a woman who sparked the movement. If Rosa Parks had not chosen to stand up that day in December 1955 by remaining seated on that bus in Montgomery, we would not be here today celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. But that was the incident that propelled him into leadership and ultimately triggered the ending of segregation in the South. The doors of educational and employment opportunities were opened and blacks, Hispanics, and women of all races streamed in on an unprecedented basis."

"Maybe some of this has to happen. Every year there is some outrageous act that reminds us that there is still so much work to be done."

"My father had a magnificent dream, but it still is only a dream. It is easier to build monuments than make a better world. If we choose to honor him in words alone, it will be a grotesque farce."

"These times call not for merriment only, but for movement."

"Jim Crow is dead. But his sophisticated, college-educated, urbane first cousin J. Crow, Esquire, is alive and kicking."

"There have been a number of gains, a number of, I think, token results. But far too many people, both black and white, are still locked out of the system and don't have the opportunity to reach toward those goals that many of us take for granted."

"I know there was so much talk in school about my daddy and people were afraid to talk to me. They thought I was stuck up. They didn't know me, had never talked to me, but just because I was Martin Luther King's daughter, I had to be stuck up and I wouldn't be able to talk to them."

"I cannot separate problems happening in South Africa with problems here. I don't think you can put too much emphasis on something as brutal and overt as South Africa."

"My father was this whip who carried a bible everywhere he went, including to someone's house to dinner. That's not the kind of minister Daddy was! All these ridiculous cliches."

"He created a spirit in this country that caused people to feel, at least for a little while, that there was some hope that things could be better. Needless to say, there was a percentage of the population that did not agree and thought things would be better if he were not around."

"I guess people don't understand that I'm just a person."

"I think basically the youth of today are just having so many problems and they are sort of confused...This is their method, of escaping...Just like I sleep to escape my problems."

"It is a real thrill to be back home. When I was here I was not as endeared to this institution as I am now. You learn in retrospect and appreciate as you move on. I was indeed shaped by my experience at Smith—it was the first time I had to struggle. It was the very first time I learned how to determine and focus very specifically on the things that I felt were important, to strategize and to learn how to go about getting them and making them happen. While it was painful then, I am truly thankful for that experience now."

"I think blacks are definitely moving together. This is good, because in order to have any movement, you've got to have togetherness. But I also feel that because of the way society is now, we cannot get along without the white man. And the way it is now, he cannot get along without us...We've got to go to the roots of it and just change the whole society - that's why I don't believe in what some people say about having a black state and a separate black nation."

"Don't tell me! Don't tell me!"

"To be perfectly honest, it has had its handicaps. The thing is that people judge you by your parents' and people expect me to be just like daddy and mother. Therefore, I can't run across the street or anything."

"Well, I wish they had built a Funtown for colored."

"Two charming young women approached me and lobbied me about this matter because they both have Down's syndrome children with a reasonably high IQ."

"The Senator is a drug dealer."

"Barack Obama has been a grave disappointment to many of us, particularly with the increase in the number of drone strikes. His Administration is now strangling any country that would dare to stand up to the might of imperial America. Ireland should be an example of a small country that stands up against this international bullying. It has already got Bradley Manning, a person I salute, from inside the army. We need more of these people to tell the truth. Meanwhile Mr. Obama is off on this vulgar deathbed tourism. The one time I agreed with Mrs. Winnie Mandela was when she condemned Jacob Zuma for having his photograph taken with the poor unfortunate Nelson Mandela who was a complete zombie in the photograph and did not have a clue who it was who was molesting him by touching his hand and this horrid stuff. Let us, please, have a little [interrupted] I am asking him to appeal to the Government to offer sanctuary to Mr. Snowden. Even though this is a small country in economic difficulty, we should affirm to the world that we stand for openness, accountability, truth, honesty, decency and integrity, all of which Mr. Snowden represents."

"It does not say much for a person's morality if he is prepared to sacrifice what he believes in for a job."

"I believe that at some stage some citizen across Europe will drop a match on the floor and the whole bloody thing will go up, and it cannot come soon enough as far as I am concerned."

"If I were a woman I would not be reassured by being told the legislators are apparently not concerned with the health of a woman. They should be."

"On a point of order, I thought I was in Seanad Éireann, but it appears I have inadvertently wandered into a meeting of Donegal County Council."

"The reason for the lack of business in this House is perfectly clear and it is not the responsibility of this House to deal with the matter. The Taoiseach and the cabal that runs Fine Gael have decided that they will take over the role previously held by Fianna Fáil as the slightly constitutional party. They have decided to destroy the Seanad by refusing to refer legislation to it."

"The Minister of State should stop saying "with respect". He and his Government have no respect at all for this House."