Quotes & Sayings About The Southern United States

I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late '40's and early '50's was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival. — Angela Davis

Another thing they talk about a lot is water - and that's a very crucial thing, which is not discussed very much in the United States but it's probably the main reason why Israel is never going to give up the West Bank. See, this is a very arid region, so water is more important than oil, and there are very limited water resources in Israel. In fact, a lot of the wars in the Middle East have been about water - for instance, the wars involving Israel and Syria have usually been about the headwaters of the Jordan, which come from Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. And as a matter of fact, one of the main reasons why Israel is holding on to the so-called "Security Zone" it seized in southern Lebanon [in the 1982 invasion] is that that area includes a mountain, Mount Hermon, which is a big part of the watershed that brings water to the region. — Noam Chomsky

It's very important that we keep these special, wild places. It defines the United States. Imagine our country without our national parks and our monuments. Here in California, imagine if you didn't have in Southern Cal the Channel Islands or the great Highway 1, Big Sur up to Point Reyes up to the Redwood country. — Douglas Brinkley

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, our country has been experiencing an "explosive growth in extremist-group activism across the United States" in recent years. The law center reported that so-called "patriot groups" - right-wing outfits steeped in anti-government conspiracy theories - grew in number from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009 - an astonishing 244 percent increase that apparently reflected a backlash against the election of America's first African American president. — Arsalan Iftikhar

In Transylvania it was memories of the Romanian revolt that stalked the Hungarian aristocratic imagination.. In Galicia it was memories of Tarnow that performed a similar service for the surviving Polish noble families. Both societies shared something of the brittle, sports-obsessed cheerfulness of the British in India - or indeed of Southerners in the pre-1861 United States. These were societies which could resort to any level of violence in support of racial supremacy. Indeed, an interesting global history could be written about the ferocity of a period which seems, very superficially, to be so 'civilized'. Southern white responses to Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion in 1831, with Turner himself flayed, beheaded and quartered, can be linked to the British blowing rebel Indians to pieces from the mouths of cannons in 1857. — Simon Winder

Here's a secret intel bulletin for all y'all who've never left Yoknapatawpha County and imagine the United States is constantly on the precipice of enemy invasion - the only way this country is ever going to surrender its liberty to a foreign power is if it keeps electing corrupt officials who auction it away to multinational corporations and overseas government interests in exactly the fashion that southern star chambers have been doing to their own people throughout their entire dyspeptic history. — Chuck Thompson

I spoke bluntly about what I had seen in a little over a year as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. To the apparent surprise of many in the room, I observed publicly that insider trading appeared to be rampant. — Preet Bharara

It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States. — Jefferson Davis

Within half a century after Butler sent Charles Mallory away from Fortress Monroe empty-handed, the children of white Union and Confederate soldiers united against African-American political and civil equality. This compact of white supremacy enabled southern whites to impose Jim Crow segregation on public space, disfranchise African-American citizens by barring them from the polls, and use the lynch-mob noose to enforce black compliance. White Americans imposed increased white supremacy outside the South, too. In non-Confederate states, many restaurants wouldn't serve black customers. Stores and factories refused to hire African Americans. Hundreds of midwestern communities forcibly evicted African-American residents and became "sundown towns" ("Don't let the sun set on you in this town"). Most whites, meanwhile, believed that — Edward E. Baptist

It is very curious that the United States and Canada both assume that diversity means only race and ethnicity. They never assume it might mean more Nazis, or more Southern Baptists. That's diversity too, you know. — Richard Rodriguez

In Andrew Jackson's administration, collaborated with the South to keep abolitionist literature out of the mails in the southern states. It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in 1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property. — Howard Zinn

Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that it is my earnest desire to regard and promote their truest interest the interests of the white and of the colored people both and equally and to put forth my best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will forever wipe out in our political affairs the color line and the distinction between North and South, to the end that we may have not merely a united North or a united South, but a united country. — Rutherford B. Hayes

The plain fact is that this country and other industrial countries are deeply dependent on animal exploitation to sustain their present economic structures. The plain fact is that we are more dependent on animal exploitation than were the states of the southern United States on human slavery ... . So, although there are more people concerned about animals and the environment, little progress has been made because those who profit from animal exploitation and the government that exists to serve their interests have a lot to lose and are not budging - not an inch. — Gary L. Francione

The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious literalism, are especially plagued by [high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality], while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European standards. — Sam Harris

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was enacted in 1865 by martial law. The Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in 1868 by martial law. The Fifteenth Amendment was enacted in 1870 by martial law. Military occupation of the Southern states did not end until 1877, twelve years after the end of the Civil War. — Eustace Mullins

Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States. — Terry Southern

In Coffeeville, Miss., at 6 p.m., there was a golden light and a child swinging in it, swinging from a big tree, over a big lawn, back and forth in front of a big airy house. To be a white middle-class child in a small southern town must be on certain levels the most golden way for a child to live in the United States. — Joan Didion

This land carries people from different countries, different cultures, even different tongues, who even warred amongst themselves, but they are united over on only one cause; hate. The people of the Southern United States united in their hate against the free population of their previous slaves. — Max Connelly

It has been said that Canada is bounded 'on the north by gold, on the west by the East, on the east by history - and on the south by friends'.* We hope that will always be the case and we hope it will be the case not only with respect to the United States, your immediate neighbor to the south, but with respect to all your southern neighbors - and ours - who are bound by the great forces of geography and history which are distinctive to the New World. — Richard M. Nixon

Notably, during this era, the notion of illegal immigration did not conjure the same political and legal consequences that it would after 1965 [...] The southern border of the United States was not militarized or guarded in the manner it would become in the late twentieth century, and seasonal, uncapped migration from Mexico was an accepted and expected labor reality. — Pratheepan Gulasekaram

In the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to his Secretary of the Navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition of California. His order to General Taylor to move troops to the Rio Grande was a challenge to the Mexicans. It was not at all clear that the Rio Grande was the southern boundary of Texas, although Texas had forced the defeated Mexican general Santa Anna to say so when he was a prisoner. The traditional border between Texas and Mexico had been the Nueces River, about 150 miles to the north, and both Mexico and the United States had recognized that as the border. However, Polk, encouraging the Texans to accept annexation, had assured them he would uphold their claims to the Rio Grande. Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans, was clearly a provocation. — Howard Zinn

If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, and would completely disarm the adversary. This you can do with perfect safety. And as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union. — Andrew Johnson

Setting aside embassies, consulates and military bases, Rose Atoll of American Samoa is the southernmost point of U.S. controlled territory. Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and half a dozen other islands are all further south than Ka Lae.
While Ka Lae is not the southermost point of the United States, it is the southernmosr point of the fifty states. — John Richard Stephens