Silence is for fools. Communication is for leaders. Justice is for those brave enough to not stand another moment dealing with people that feel the solution to any problem is through cold indifference because of their lack of courage and insecurities.

The American flag doesn’t give her glory on a peaceful, calm day. It’s when the winds pick up and become boisterous, do we see her strength. When she unfolds her hand, and shows her frayed fingers, where we see the stretch of red-blood lines of man that fought for this land. The purity of white...

Peonage, Anti-Lynch Bill, poll tax, these are our issues. They are the most controversial issues in American life, and some of us will have to die for them! Yes, we want to join with the CIO! We cannot stop for controversy!” And there in the faces of my people I saw strength. There with the...

We are conducting a preliminary inquiry in an effort to determine whether there were any violations of federal civil rights committed at the facility.

Why should the victim who has never received a dime sit back while the civil rights violator gets his job and back pay?

These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen — a society...

[T]he full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields.”[Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979)]

The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense – the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on...

You have to remember, rights don’t come in groups we shouldn’t have ‘gay rights’; rights come as individuals, and we wouldn’t have this major debate going on. It would be behavior that would count, not what person belongs to what group.

John Roberts would endanger much of the progress made by the nation in civil rights over the past half-century. If John Roberts replaces Sandra Day O’Connor, the balance of the court will shift to the right for decades to come, imperiling Americans’ constitutional rights and liberties.

Immigration is the No. 2 issue after civil rights. Civil rights right now is what’s keeping people from demonstrating.

People believe what they want to believe. Even if it isn’t true.

Already the people murmur that I am your enemybecause they say that in verse I give the world your me.They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos.Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voicebecause you are the dressing and the essence is me;and the most profound abyss is...

I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.

Health is a human necessity; health is a human right

Only a “dry as dust” religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an Earthly hell.

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which...

The words ‘bad timing’ came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning…they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of...

Being an American is about having the right to be who you are. Sometimes that doesn’t happen.

It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an “integrationist” – this was never, quite, my own idea of myself – and Malcolm was considered to be a “racist in reverse.” This formulation, in terms of power – and power is the arena in which racism is acted out...

a pioneer in the civil rights movement who one day was just sick and tired of being sick and tired, and refused to give up her seat and inspired a whole generation of people to fight for freedom.

While growing up, on the news every night was the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. We were all talking about what was happening when Kennedy got killed and King got killed. The whole Watergate thing with Nixon was big.

really helped bail out the civil-rights movement.

I am an educated black woman in a time when educated black people will be called upon to risk everything for the rights of black people everywhere.

A leader is a planter—a planter of ideas, seeds of change, and a vision for justice

The Department of Justice enforces civil rights laws and is sensitive to civil rights concerns, … The president thinks John Ashcroft is a man of integrity. He is a good man and he will enforce the civil rights laws. He said he talked to John Ashcroft about this when selecting him.

the underlying struggle – between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and...

Libraries are about books. Books have no color. And they don’t care who reads them.

In its essence, Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is one citizen’s soul-searing plea with his countrymen––Whites and Blacks––to recognize that racial disparities fueled by unwarranted bigotry were crippling America’s ability to shine as a true beacon of democracy in a world filled with people groping their way through suffocating shadows of...

There will always be people afraid of the monsters in the night. They are usually the ones that look for them because they have proven they exist in themselves.

…legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this...

People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I...

He does not have a sufficiently strong dedication to civil rights law that I believe a judge on this circuit court must have.

They have done what they set out to do … to engage the wider community in their fight for civil rights.

The bottom line is we recognize that civil rights violations, even allegations of civil rights violations, is a serious matter. We’re going to investigate all credible allegations.

[O]ur revolt was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination.

Es ist wichtig zu begreifen, dass wir der Toleranz nicht dienen, wenn wir unser Profil verwässern, sondern indem wir uns umgekehrt unserer eigenen Werte wieder vergewissern. […] Wir tun der Toleranz auch nichts Böses an, wenn wir die Menschenrechte verteidigen, wie sie in den letzten Jahrhunderten und Jahrzehnten entwickelt und niedergeschrieben wurden in der Allgemeinen...

Wir sind das Volk!”Dieser Satz hat uns gelehrt, dass wir, wenn wir unserer Sehnsucht glauben und ihr vertrauen, die Angst verlieren können. Eine Angst, die willfährige Dienerin jeder Art von nicht legitimierter Herrschaft ist, die uns ohnmächtig macht, die uns bindet. In dem Augenblick aber, in dem wir unsere Angst als Angst benennen und Anpassung...

A second line is in effect a civil rights demonstration. Literally, demonstrating the civil right of the community to assemble in the street for peaceful purposes. Or, more simply, demonstrating the civil right of the community to exist.

The Algerians were revolutionsists, they wanted land. France offered to let them be integrated into France. They told France, to hell with Fance, they wanted some land, not some France.

I was in the kitchen drinking coffee when I heard Coretta cry, “Martin, Martin, come quickly!” I put down my cup and ran toward the living room. As I approached the front window Coretta pointed joyfully to a slowly moving bus: “Darling, it’s empty!

…in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow it’s been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.

If we are to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them. The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of a despotic...

[Ella Baker]’s second defining characteristic was her dislike of top-down leadership… ‘She felt leaders were not appointed but the rose up. Someone will rise. Someone will emerge’. It was an attitude Baker shared with some of the older women in the movement.

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here...

You cannot stand for civil rights + not support gay marriage. You cannot stand for human rights + not support gay marriage. It’s that simple.Everywhere, the voice of the oppressed must echo + ring out or else it will be crushed by the tyranny of wickedness.

Before, the woods had always done so much for me. Once I could actually go out into the woods and communicate with God, or Nature or something. Now that something didn’t come through. It was just not there anymore. More than ever I began to wonder whether God actually existed. Maybe God changed as the...

A champion for civil rights and social justice like him does not come around every day, … He wanted nothing less than what all Americans strive for a good job, safe neighborhoods, quality schools and a place to call home.