civil-rights-activists

"I don’t believe in empire, and I actively resist colonialism and its toxic and enduring legacy."

"But there were limits of the power that the black community had. It could not punish those from the outside who wrought crime against us, it could not demand that justice be done, it could beg, it could pray, you know, it could cajole, it could wheedle, you know, but it could never insist, and we knew that that was a limit"

"I had a sense of certainty that no matter how dark it is now, one of these days it'll change."

"Peace, peace, peace. This is where it’s at, and this is where I am."

"The history of the black man on the frontier – and, indeed, the history of the Indian – has never really been paid attention to in the movies."

"Art has a deep responsibility, social, cultural, and otherwise. And that the basic motivation for the creation of art is, in a sense, to meet those responsibilities. Now, it doesn't mean that you cannot express yourself in any way you want to, but it takes place in a social context, whether you mean it to do so or not"

"We were not by any means a helpless community, cowering against, under the boot heel of the oppressor"

"I have less opportunities than I used to, but I don't think there's any prejudice against me because of my age"

"in the end it is history that will tell the story"

"Mankind, humankind is at stake"

"I don’t think being a celebrity or being anything else overrides the responsibility to be a decent, humane citizen"

"It was a tradition that had gone all the way back into slavery, as long as we knew ourselves, we knew this as a part of the world in which we lived. We related to it on an individual basis, as it happened, we related to the incidents."

"One of the traps we've tried to avoid is the presentation of ourselves as victims or beggars"

"We have freedom. What we don't have is equality!"

"I fully expected that a black man particularly would by lynched from time to time because it was going on when I came into the world"

"The struggle and the arts are connected almost by definition"

"We're going somewhere, even if it's only around the Goddamn corner"

"Criticism used to be an art practiced by educated people. Now you don't know what any of them are looking for in anything"

"Blacks are by and large are still, in a majority sense, Democrats"

"If you can’t outfight the man, outsmart him"

"I would say that a deeper patriotism is required when we consider to whom we owe our patriotic response"

"I’d hate to go to hell and say I was busy trying to save the Oscars"

"Colorblind casting shouldn't violate common sense"

"There is a lot of American history waiting to be rediscovered, once you get away from the official version"

"Performing artists are less political today than they were years ago because they're not called on to be political"

"I come together to say, I choose to live for brotherhood and not for folly. I choose peace and not war. I choose life and not death."

"We knew that if we lived within those parameters there was a world, that was really to some degree a safe world, and a world that provided us, reaffirmed us as to whom we were because it was a black world"

"when the time comes we'll give each other our own Oscar and attend our own funerals and screw the rest of it if necessary"

"Optimism is small and personal"

"They knew what to say because it fell into the existing rhetoric"

"Tears started streaming down my face because the power of forgiveness is something great. If my dad could forgive George Wallace, who am I to say that I can’t forgive."

"It’s a long road that we’ve gone down, but it’s not over. There’s a division in America today, and it’s time for a reconciliation."

"It was tremendous. It was huge. It’s Mississippi, and so much happened in Mississippi, so I thought it was more important than ever. I had a come-to-Jesus moment within my soul. I mean, I’m honored."

"They should learn how to do it nonviolently, but that’s it. I think the future looks bright."

"I didn’t know him any other way,And, if I called him something else, he would say that I was rude and disrespectful and wouldn’t listen to me."

"It doesn’t matter if you have to stand in lines for five or six hours to vote. Stand there.”"

"What can you do? What are you going to do? We need a healing in America right now. We need a healing going on in the Heartland. We need a healing going on in Mississippi"

"Never mind the wind and the rain, we’ll fight."

"A lot of people opposed our civil rights efforts. I had to do what I thought was the most important thing. That’s all there was to it."

"Because of my family and our community, my childhood was unique. I never learned what I couldn’t do — as a child, as a woman, or as a black person."

"I ruined Christmas for everyone because I couldn’t figure out how a reindeer could fly. I mean, they just aren’t built for flying, anyone could see that. So I had to reject either the truthfulness of adults or the conclusions of my own mind."

"I had to do what I thought was the most important thing."

"We should not want to think of America as a 'melting pot,' but as a great interracial laboratory where Americans can really begin to build the thing which the rest of the world feels they stand for...that is real democracy."

"Her greatest aim is to bring to her audience the humanness of the Negro wherever he is found."

"I wrote that poem ["All the Women Caught in Flaring Light"] because, at the time I was writing the book [Crime Against Nature], I would read at women's cultural spaces and lesbians would come up and tell me heartrending stories. I felt a responsibility to tell some of them. I guess it's what happens when you're a writer in a culture of repressed groups...I think the concept of writing or art as just self-expression or self-fulfillment is a Eurocentric and sterile patriarchal idea...Because it goes only one way. And it's not a way of conceiving of art that acknowledges that you are able to make art only because things come to you from your community. The image of the individualistic, egocentric artist-white, male, and heterosexual-is premised on him creating all by himself in defiance of his culture. But that's not how I have made my art, nor is it how most people in repressed cultures create. You make art only in the matrix of your community and you're pretty foolish if you don't think that that's true. Responsibility isn't a grim thing, you know, in that context. It's just what's real You are fed, and you feed."

"It's important to deal directly with lesbian issues, whether or not one does that as an open lesbian teacher. It's important not to just shove lesbian issues to one side but to deal with them head on in the classroom, especially if one is teaching women's studies. The controversy right now is over a woman teacher bringing lesbian issues into the classroom. In another era you couldn't be a married woman and teach. It really is about what's acceptable to do as a woman occupying a position in an educational system that's supposed to be a replication of heterosexuality. Before you even start talking about what books you're going to use, you have to be ready to address that root premise."

"I don't think about my writing as being about fame. I think of it in a communal context. Yet it's naive and apolitical to deny that elements of privilege accrue to visibility. Certainly, a visibly lesbian artist is doing something that many lesbians can't do in their own work lives. That visibility is the result of community building, of something that is given to the lesbian artist from the lesbian community. When I think about these issues, it seems all the more reason to be scrupulous about how to return things to the community and to place my life in perspective. I've worked hard, but I certainly could not be doing this by myself. The other thing I know about power is what I've learned from Audre Lorde, who said that if we don't use our power, it will be turned against us. I think there is an important distinction between power over and power with. I'm interested in how we develop power with others. I think it's important that my having access to my own power in my writing doesn't mean draining it away from the community or using it in opposition to others but, rather, using my power collectively with others to build a transformative future."

"I begin to understand that a white woman of the South can live and write, but not of the dead heroes. She can live and write a new kind of honor, the daily, conscious actions of women in true rebellion. ("Rebellion")"

"I understood finally that this heroic will to endure is still not the same as the will to change, the true rebellion. ("Rebellion")"

"Mary Burton described Cleminshaw as “a really strong and determined woman” despite being physically frail in her later years"