Civil Right Quote by John Kennedy Toole

“What rent do you pay here?" I inquired. "I don’t know,—what is it, Sam?" "All we make," answered Sam. It is a depressing place,—bare,…

— W.E.B. Du Bois

“...I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I…

— David Mitchell

“Colored or not, we all work for the white man's cotton...”

— James Lee Burke Red Cherry Blues

“I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads…

— Rick Bragg

Suffice it to say, during the whole long day I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped…

— Solomon Northup

“When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but no one…

— Colson Whitehead

“I asked him if he thought “there” was better than “here.” “Not better,” he said. “I mean, my great-great-grandpap got his leg shot off.…

— Tony Horwitz

“These were not idle threats. Suspected labor agents were arrested routinely whenever a trainload of African Americans left or when the fields were empty…

— Carol Anderson

“It was not an unusual site to see Negro tenant farmers crossing the intersection of Spring and Barbrick on the way to the cotton…

— Nancy B. Brewer

“if at all, since the Civil War. In Greenwood, many black workers were still earning 30 cents an hour and returning huge profits for…

— Ian Bell

“These negroes aren't asking for no nation. They wanna crawl back on the plantation.”

— Malcolm X

“Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant…

— W.E.B. Du Bois