Quotes & Sayings About Segregation

Everybody has the right to marry the person they love and be represented as a couple and family ... It's something that people will look back on in years to come and say, 'I can't believe it took so long for us to recognize this.' It'll be like segregation and giving women the right to vote. — Julianne Moore

Both morally and practically, segregation is to me a basic injustice. Since I believe it to be so, I must attempt to remove it. There are three ways in which one can deal with an injustice. (a) One can accept it without protest. (b) On can seek to avoid it. (c) One can resist the injustice non-violently. To accept it is to perpetuate it. — Bayard Rustin

Groucho Marx shot back angrily, "The Sandy McPhersons and Yonny Yohnsons were not a minority being subjected to oppression, restriction, segregation or persecution. — Kliph Nesteroff

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 delay. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down. — Benjamin E. Mays

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me. — Maya Angelou

As a matter of history, the Fourteenth Amendment was not understood to ban segregation on the basis of race. — Cass Sunstein

Remember, we really grew up separately; our life experience was very different because of segregation. So I think comedy is a good space to work those things out and educate everyone about the different experiences and different race groups in South Africa. — Riaad Moosa

In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activism and new federal laws inspired the same resistance to racial progress and once again led to a spike in the use of Confederate imagery. In fact, it was in the 1950s, after racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, that many Southern states erected Confederate flags atop their state government buildings. — Bryan Stevenson

Personally I do not believe in a national agency devoted only to the negro blind because in spirit and principle I am against all segregation, and the blind already have difficulties enough without being cramped and harassed by social barriers. — Helen Keller

A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the state's segregation laws was democratically elected? — Martin Luther King Jr.

After the oil crisis of 1973, many European countries tightened restrictions on immigrants. By then, millions of Muslims had decided to settle in Europe, preferring the social segregation and racial discrimination they found in the West to political and economic turmoil at home. — Pankaj Mishra

If Nepal is to become a new Nepal, she must first become free from ethnic segregation. — Santosh Kalwar

Outside of the musical knowledge and exposure, Coltrane also apprenticed in the daily struggles of black musicians on the road. Segregation was a dominant factor in the majority of performance venues, as well as the surrounding geographical area. This determined where one could eat, use the bathroom, get gasoline, rent a hotel room, or even get a drink of water. And there was always the threat of racist police encounters. These cultural experiences were a part of his mentoring on the road and influenced the evolution of his conscious intent to use music as a force for goodness. — Leonard Brown

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God. — John Shelby Spong

When the injunction was issued in Birmingham, our failure to obey it bewildered our opponents. They did not know what to do. We did not hide our intentions. In fact, I announced our plan to the press, pointing out that we were not anarchists advocating lawlessness, but that it was obvious to us that the courts of Alabama had misused the judicial process in order to perpetuate injustice and segregation. Consequently, we could not, in good conscience, obey their findings. I intended to be one of the first to set — Martin Luther King Jr.

They are not American super-women, but they are the best of Americans. They have remained responsible, critical, and loving in the face of servitude, sexual assault, segregation, poverty, and psychological violence. They have done this hard, messy work because they were committed to life and justice, and so we all might live more responsibly tomorrow. — Kiese Laymon

Right now religion has the romantic aura of the forbidden - Christ is cool. We need to bring it into the schools, which kids already hate, and associate it firmly with boredom, regulation, condescension, makework and de facto segregation ... Prayer in the schools will rid us of the bland no-offense ecumenism that is so infuriating to us anticlericals: Oh, so now you say Jews didn't kill Christ - a little on the late side, isn't it? — Katha Pollitt

In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence. — Martin Luther King Jr.

But integration and equality are myths; they disguise a new segregation and a new equality ... Every social order institutes its own program of separation or segregation. A particular faith and morality is given privileged status and all else is separated for progressive elimination. — R.J. Rushdoony

Pop culture mirrored the segregation. — Jeff Chain

The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on. — Dorothy Day

In schools of theology Negroes are taught the interpretation of the Bible worked out by those who have justified segregation and winked at the economic debasement of the Negro at times almost to the point of starvation. — Carter G. Woodson

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities? We believe that it does. — Earl Warren

There's only one way America's neighborhoods will begin to integrate: people have to want it more than vested public and corporate interests are opposed to it. And more people should want it. Mixed-race, mixed-income housing is a product we need to market. It's the only real solution to segregated schools, for one. (140) — Tanner Colby

Why was there not massive civil disobedience against this anti-Christian discrimination, as there was against segregation? — Pat Buchanan

As long as you continue to tar social democracy with all the crimes of communism, I feel equally entitled to tar the free market with the crimes of slavery, segregation, colonialism and genocide; piss me off and I'll add fascism and the Nazis. — Greg Erwin

On the outside, America looks like this great melting pot, but on the inside, there's this segregation in American cinema. Why does a Latino film have to be for Latinos? Why is a black film just for black people? Why? — Gurinder Chadha

Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Vouchers lead to competition, not re-segregation. — Jim DeMint

That white uniform was her 'pass' to get into white places with us - the grocery store, the state fair, the movies. Even though this was the 70s and the segregation laws had changed, the 'rules' had not. — Kathryn Stockett

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like - when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn't look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that's terrorism, too. — Alice Walker

But into the first decades of the twentieth century, even at the New York Times, it was uncommon for journalists to see a sharp divide between facts and values. Yet the belief in objectivity is just this: the belief that one can and should separate facts from values. Facts, in this view, are assertions about the world open to independent validation. They stand beyond the distorting influences of any individual's personal preferences. Values, in this view, are an individual's conscious or unconscious preferences for what the world should be; they are seen as ultimately subjective and so without legitimate claim on other people. The belief in objectivity is a faith in "facts," a distrust of "values," and a commitment to their segregation. — Michael Schudson

if we can't worship the same God together inside the same church buildings, then we will still knock on your door and so irritate you thatyou cannot worship your white God in peace, that you cannot escape thinking about the problems of segregation even on Sunday morning, that we are just letting you know that every single aspect of your Southern Way of Life is under attack. — Stephen R. Haynes

I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Marriage is an institution fits in perfect harmony with the laws of nature; whereas systems of slavery and segregation were designed to brutally oppress people and thereby violated the laws of nature. — Jack Kingston

Because I grew up in Chicago, I didn't have an emotional relationship to segregation. I understood the facts and stories, but there was not an emotional relationship. — Diane Nash

It shames me to admit that in the white-defined society in which I was raised, blacks were considered merely background. This was worse than physical segregation. This was psychological segregation. It wasn't that we were taught not to associate with blacks: close association was unavoidable. Instead, we were taught to see half the population not as individuals but as functionaries - maids, yardmen, etc. — Jonathan Odell

Be true. Be beautiful. Be free. In the midst of segregation and racism Mamma raised us to be independent and free. We saw ourselves as citizens of the world, not of a block. — Debbie Allen

Individuality is but another act of segregation. We need instead learn the process of Individuation. One is to know thyself merely to be a single brick within the wall of mass creation and group consciousness. — Tyler J. Hebert

Unlike [Woodrow] Wilson, Louis Brandeis did not support the segregation of the federal government. He was personally courteous to African Americans. He advised them and advised the head of Howard University to create a good law school. And that inspired Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall in their path-breaking work on behalf of desegregation. — Jeffrey Rosen

History reveals that the seeds of the new system of control were planted well before the end of the Civil Rights Movement. A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding "law and order" rather than "segregation forever. — Michelle Alexander

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote. — Jesse Jackson

What we cannot deny is that there's an association between exclusion, segregation, non-violent extremist thinking, and jihadism. — Maajid Nawaz

A truce between Israel and Palestine? Imagine walking into a doctor's office. You sit down, pick up a magazine, and begin to read. A few minutes later, a man walks in, the man who killed your wife, the man whose son you murdered. He sits down, picks up a magazine, and begins to read.
A two-state solution to the problem between Israel and Palestine? Imagine walking into a doctor's office. You sit down, pick up a magazine, and begin to read. Next door, a man walks into the restaurant, the man who killed your wife, the man whose son you murdered. He sits down at a table, orders a meal, and begins to eat.
In either case, there is an intolerable tension that has resisted resolution by diplomacy, combat, sanctions, or segregation. Forgiveness is the only reasonable solution. — Ron Brackin

The current Baptist view that God condemns "homosexual behavior" and same-sex marriages comes from the same kind of broad and anachronistic scriptural readings as prior support for segregation. — Anonymous

Upon reflection, it is relatively easy to understand how Americans come to deny the evils of mass incarceration. Denial is facilitated by persistent racial segregation in housing and schools, by political demagoguery, by racialized media imagery, and by the ease of changing one's perception of reality simply by changing television channels. There is little reason to doubt the prevailing "common sense" that black and brown men have been locked up en masse merely in response to crime rates when one's sources of information are mainstream media outlets. — Michelle Alexander

You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was. — Anna Deavere Smith

If we don't want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET, and the BET Awards and the Image Awards, where you're only awarded if you're black. — Stacey Dash

The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something. — John Lewis

Segregation or separation is thus a basic principle of Biblical Law with respect to religion and morality. Every attempt to destroy this principle is an effort to reduce society to its lowest common denominator. — R.J. Rushdoony

America is the promised land, because each generation bequeathed to its children a promise, a promise that they might not come to enjoy but which they fully expected their offspring to fulfill. So the words 'all men are created equal' took a life of its own, ultimately destined to end slavery and enfranchise women. And the words 'equal protection' and 'due process' inevitably led to the end of the words 'separate but equal,' ensuring that the walls of segregation would crumble, whether at the lunch counter or at the voting booth. — Joe Biden

I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, "If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on." I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do. — Nikki Giovanni

Discrimination and segregation are evidence of lower intelligence. — Erik Martin Willen

We don't go for segregation. We go for separation. Separation is when you have your own. You control your own economy; you control your own politics; you control your own society; you control your own everything. You have yours and you control yours; we have ours and we control ours. — Malcolm X

We are 10 percent of the population of this nation and it would be foolish for me to stand up and tell you we are going to get our freedom by ourselves. There's going to have to be a coalition of conscience and we aren't going to be free here in Mississippi and anywhere in the United States until there is a committed empathy on the part of the white man of this country, and he comes to see along with us that segregation denigrates him as much as it does the Negro. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Segregation never brought anyone anything except trouble. — Paul Harris

Many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Jesse Owen was bigger than a black hero, he was an American hero. For me, I looked at it from that perspective. Through my research, I obviously learned a lot, much of which made me sad, upset, disappointed and even angry, regarding what Jesse had to go through. Not only was he a black man in America during an age of high racial tension and segregation, but he was also living in the middle of the Great Depression - it was very difficult times for him and his family. — Stephan James

One of the most significant effects of age-segregation in our society has been the isolation of children from the world of work. Whereas in the past children not only saw what their parents did for a living but even shared substantially in the task, many children nowadays have only a vague notion of the nature of the parent's job, and have had little or no opportunity to observe the parent, or for that matter any other adult, when he is fully engaged in his work. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

[I] can't actually imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease. Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices. The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin [..] When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled? — Eric Holder

The relevant question is not whether back then a few extraordinary individuals could overcome a system strongly weighted against them or whether today an admittedly far greater number requiring far less talent can succeed. The real question is whether it's harder for the people in this audience to succeed be they extraordinary, average, or below average. If it is, and I think it obvious that it is, then that's untenable in a country that purports to provide equal opportunity for all. Now of course you'll dispute my claim that it is more difficult to succeed for them. You say the battle's over. I say not only is it not over but you yourself are stationed on the frontline of the battle and have been all these years. This room and the criminal justice system as a whole is the frontline. This is where modern-day segregation lives on. — Sergio De La Pava

I think it's a bit of a myth that black Americans need one leader. We're not a monolith. And now that legal segregation and discrimination has been pretty much abolished there isn't the sort of universal mandate that a black leader would have. Black folks live in a wide variety of social situations right now. — John Legend

That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior. — John Taylor Gatto

Many of the same people who are crying for mankind to tolerate everything have overlooked examples of intolerance that have utterly reshaped the country in which we live. For instance, what would this country be like if George Washington had tolerated British troops? Where would we be today if Thomas Jefferson had tolerated King George III? Or what if Fredrick Douglas had tolerated slavery, or Martin Luther King Jr. had tolerated segregation? What would America be like if Winston Churchill had tolerated Adolf Hitler or if Susan B. Anthony tolerated only men voting? Part of what made these individuals great was that they were strong enough to stand up for their convictions. They recognized something as "wrong," and they didn't tolerate it. — Brad Harrub

The canard about the Civil Rights Movement is embedded within a larger deception that progressives uniformly put forward. This deception is intended to defuse the sordid history of the Democratic Party's two-century involvement in a parade of evils from slavery to segregation to lynching to forced sterilization to support for fascism to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. All these horrors are the work of the Democratic Party. — Dinesh D'Souza

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches. — Strom Thurmond

For me, the real earth is that chosen part of the universe, still almost universally dispersed and in course of gradual segregation, but which is little by little taking on body and form in Christ. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

I agree that all kids of all colors love hip-hop. My point in writing the book was to raise questions about the ways the hip-hop generation and the millennium generation, both who have lived their entire lives in post-segregation America, are processing race in radically different ways than any generation of Americans. I think they have a lot to tell us as a country about ways of addressing race matters. — Bakari Kitwana

I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights. — Joseph Stiglitz

The whole reason for Jazz at the Philharmonic was to take it to places where I could break down segregation. — Norman Granz

I do not think I was a hothead - not then and not now. I thought I was right. I had read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible. Segregation seemed evil from the time I was a boy. Slavery is an abomination on the American soul, ineradicable stain on our body politic. But Penn Center lit a fire that has never gone out, and the election of President Barack Obama was one of the happiest days of my life. — Pat Conroy

Segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. But separation is that which is done voluntarily, by two equals- for the good of both. — Malcolm X

A God who is good knows no segregation amongst words or names. And were a God to deny his blessing to those who pursue a different path to eternity, there would be no human who should offer worship. — Kahlil Gibran

I grew up in the South. I grew up in the days of legalized segregation. And, so, whether you called it legal racial segregation or you called it apartheid, it was the same injustice. — Johnnetta B. Cole

The grand irony, however, is that Southern segregation was not brought to an end, nor redneck violence dramatically reduced, by violence. — Stanley Crouch

Segregation in the American South was bankrolled by the wealthy eugenicist from the Northeast, Wickliffe Draper. — A.E. Samaan

We didn't have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free. — Cab Calloway

In the Spring of 1962, a white postal worker from Baltimore, William Moore, decided to use his ten-day vacation to showcase his passion for Civil Rights. Moore planned a "Freedom Walk" from Chattanooga, Tennessee, across Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, where he would confront Governor Ross Barnett about the injustice of racial segregation. Moore, who had a history of psychiatric illness, entered Alabama wearing signs that read MISSISSIPPI OR BUST, END SEGREGATION IN AMERICA, and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL MEN. The much-publicized march ended tragically, when Moore's body was found on a roadside near Gadsen, Alabama - he had been shot to death. — Jeffrey K. Smith

This segregation is confirmed by the common stereotypes of these two disciplines and their representatives. While scientists are perceived as absentminded, casually dressed individuals who live in a refined world of abstract theory with little practical reality, lawyers are usually perceived as formally dressed people who are practically oriented, concentrating mainly on trivialities (such as negotiating their retaining fee) and engaging professionally in all sorts of nitty-gritty social intercourse - the kind of things that normal people, although worried by them, would rather not have to deal with themselves. — Fritjof Capra

The Church squashed in blood Albigensian and Arian heresies, destroyed Druids and other non-Christian cults in Europe, baptized Slavs and Balts by fire and sword; do you think it wouldn't have been able to eliminate the Jews if it had wished to? The concept of 'racial segregation' was totally foreign to Christianity — Israel Shamir

Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist. — Auliq Ice

All of you are aware of the tragic history of racism in America, but for a very long time, African-Americans and their white allies came together and they struggled and they stood up for justice and they stood up to lynching and they stood up to segregation and the stood up to a nation where African-Americans couldn't even vote in America. — Bernie Sanders

I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war. — Bayard Rustin

You have to be a whole, dignified, self-respecting person in order to be an English teacher or whatever kind of job your education would prepare you for, and I just knew that segregation was wrong, and I knew that I should not be going along with it. That I should resist it. — Diane Nash

In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like. — Maya Angelou

The Bible Belt, the religious South, is the section of the country that practiced slavery until the war made them give it up. They practiced segregation. They practiced lynchings. I don't see any great value in that. — John Shelby Spong

Some people in the church, like Martin Luther King, Jr., came out against segregation. But if you look at the bulk of organized religion, you will discover that it endorsed slavery and quoted the Bible to approve it; the Pope even owned slaves. — John Shelby Spong

$1,200, That was the price of a man in those days. Now you can call him black, or you can call him a slave, but he was a man nonetheless. — Jay Grewal

When asked what gave her the strength and commitment to refuse segregation, (Rosa) Parks credited her mother and grandfather for giving me the spirit of freedom ... that I should not feel because of my race or color, inferior to any person. That I should do my very best to be a respectable person, to respect myself, to expect respect from others. — Jeanne Theoharis

America preaches integration and practices segregation. — Malcolm X

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance. — Jonathan Kozol

From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market through means both legal and extralegal. Chicago whites employed every measure, from 'restrictive covenants' to bombings, to keep their neighborhoods segregated. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

What used to be racial segregation now mirrors itself in class segregation, this great sorting (has) taken place. It creates its own politics. There are some communities where not only do I not know poor people, I don't even know people who have trouble paying the bills at the end of the month. I just don't know those people. And so there's less sense of investment in those children. — Barack Obama

It may be underfunded and at times mismanaged, but the [Endangered Species] Act is an unprecedented attempt to delegate human-caused extinction to the chapters of history we would rather not revisit: the Slave Trade, the Indian Removal Policy, the subjection of women, child labor, segregation. The Endangered Species Act is a zero-tolerance law: no new extinctions. It keeps eyes on the ground with legal backing-the gun may be in the holster most of the time, but its available if necessary to keep species from disappearing. I discovered in my travels that a law protecting all animals and plants, all of nature, might be as revolutionary-and as American-as the Declaration of Independence. — Joe Roman

Back then, as a teenager, I kept thinking, Why don't the adult around here just say something? Say it so they know we don't accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.' And I did. — Claudette Colvin

Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy. — A. Philip Randolph

After I found out that I was playing music and that I'd have to learn how to read and write music, I started doing that about two years later. Finally, I said, "Oh, that means what I really want to do is to be a composer." But when I was coming up in Texas, there was segregation. There was no schools to go to. I taught myself how to read and how to start writing. — Ornette Coleman

My uncertainty disappeared. Segregation is evil, and I cannot, as a minister, condone evil. — Martin Luther King Jr.

People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the "whites only" signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery. — Assata Shakur