Roy Wilkins Civil Rights Quotes & Sayings

It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual. — John Howard Griffin

Slowly we have lifeted ourselves by our own bootstraps. Step by halting step, we have beat our way back — Roy Wilkins

President Eisenhower was a fine general and a good, decent man, but if he had fought World War II the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German now. — Roy Wilkins