Segregation Quotes

Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people. (Coretta Scott King)
The grand irony, however, is that Southern segregation was not brought to an end, nor redneck violence dramatically reduced, by violence. View quote
Stanley Crouch
Segregation shaped me; education liberated me. View quote
Maya Angelou
Japan lives with drastic segregation between the sublime, the ugly, and the utterly without qualities. Dominance of the last 2 categories makes mere presence of the first stunning: when beauty 'happens', it is absolutely surprising. View quote
Rem Koolhaas
The difference between de jure and de facto segregation is the difference between open, forthright bigotry and the shamefaced kind that works through unwritten agreements between real estate dealers, school officials, and local politicians. View quote
Shirley Chisholm
[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? View quote
Eric Holder
Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures it, that is, has need of it. If a culture is dominated by a medium that requires the segregation of the young in order that they learn unnatural, specialized, and complex skills and attitudes, then childhood, in one form or another, will emerge, articulate and indispensable. View quote
Neil Postman
I feel that segregation is totally unchristian, and that it is against everything the Christian religion stands for. View quote
Martin Luther King Jr.
I didn't actually realise what apartheid meant. I'm probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses. View quote
John Deacon
My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise. View quote
John Lewis (civil rights leader)
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 (civil rights leader))
When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. View quote
John Shelby Spong
While housing discrimination and segregation in 2005 still affect millions of people, that's not the way it has to be. Some things can change and should. View quote
Bruce Hornsby
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. View quote
Benjamin E. Mays
Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any. View quote
Cab Calloway
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. View quote
Jack Kingston
The March on Washington affirmed our values as a people: equality and opportunity for all. Forty-one years ago, during a time of segregation, these were an ideal. View quote
Leonard Boswell
The tragedy of the civil rights movement is that just as it achieved the beginning of the end of racial segregation, white educated elites became swept up in the glamour of the sexual revolution. View quote
Maggie Gallagher
It was the best route to get folks to understand segregation fast. Civil rights and women's rights had a clear history. Making the transition to rights for people with disabilities became easier because we had the history of the other two. View quote
Major Owens
During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities. View quote
Michael N. Castle
I was born in Columbia in 1954, the year the Supreme Court invalidated racial segregation in public schools. I visited frequently but did not live there. (Randall Kennedy)
Segregation in the South is honest, open and aboveboard. Of the two systems, or styles of segregation, the Northern and the Southern, there is no doubt whatever in my mind which is the better. View quote
Strom Thurmond
When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art. View quote
Jeanne Moreau
Happily, the days when overt racial discrimination and segregation were championed by social conservatives are long past. View quote
George Takei
As I think back on those years, I find it interesting that many people seemed to have trouble with their identities as black men. Having had to accept my blackness in the caldron of ridicule from some of my black schoolmates under segregation, then immediately thereafter remain secure in that identity during my years at all-white seminary, I had few racial identity problems. I knew who I was and needed no gimmicks to affirm my identity. Nor, might I add, do I need anyone telling me who I am today. This is especially true of the psycho-silliness about forgetting my roots or self-hatred. If anything, this shows that some people have too much time on their hands. View quote
Clarence Thomas