Any suggestion that a segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong. ... Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals, and the founding ideals of our nation, and in fact the founding ideals of the political party I represent, was and remains today the equal dignity and equal rights of every American.
The and the racial segregation that was so dramatically challenged during the mid-twentieth century freedom movement was produced not during slavery but rather in an attempt to manage free black people who would have been far more successful in pushing forward democracy for all.
In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes... in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches- one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter absence of such social amenities between estranged races, whose separation extends even to parks and street cars.
The ability of the United States to go from legal segregation a half century ago to the election of a black president suggests there is enormous elasticity in the American political system, and that the country has the capacity to deal with what it now faces, both inside and outside its borders.
To compress into a chapter any attempt to describe the Negro in the South is like trying to squeeze a sponge into a matchbox.
The economic cost of segregation is of course preposterous and staggering. It is a cardinal reason why the South is so poor. In effect, it means that two sets of everything from schools to insane asylums to penitentiaries to playgrounds have to be maintained.
There are 55,000 Negro college graduates in the United States. Most Southern whites have never seen one.
Not long ago, but before World War II was over, a young Negro girl was asked how she would punish Hitler. Answer: "Paint him black and bring him over here."
I feel that segregation is totally unchristian, and that it is against everything the Christian religion stands for.
We must continue to break down the barrier of segregation. We must resist all forms of racial injustice. This resistance must always be on the highest level of dignity and discipline. It must never degenerate to the crippling level of violence.
Segregation is wrong because it is a system of adultery perpetuated by an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.
Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people.
Our children deserve quality education. We believe that segregated schools are morally wrong and unconstitutional... Our approach is to work to eradicate the root causes of segregated schools, such as and gerrymandered school districts. We must get on with the education of all our children.
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.