A Quote by Charles Evers

Hands that picked cotton can now pick the mayor.

Charles Evers

Quote Topics

Cotton Hands Mayor Now Pick Picked

Quote Author

Charles Evers
American - Activist
Born: September 11, 1922

The blacks have their parties, hustle a little liquor, get some things together, and I used to play for those peoples. They'd come get me on time, but they wouldn't bring me back on time... Done picked cotton all day, play all night long, then pick cotton all day the next day before I could get a chance to sleep.

Muddy Waters

I remember, and I will never forget, one day - I was six years old and I was playing beside the road and this plantation owner drove up to me and stopped and asked me "could I pick some cotton." I told him I didn't know and he said, "Yes, you can. I will give you things that you want from the commissary store," and he named a huge list that he called off. I picked the 30 pounds of cotton that week, but I found out what actually happened was he was trapping me into beginning the work I was to keep doing and I never did get out of his debt again.

Fannie Lou Hamer

What most people call loving consists of picking out a woman and marrying her. They pick her out, I swear, I’ve seen them. As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. They probably say that they pick her out because-they-love-her, I think it’s just the siteoppo. Beatrice wasn’t picked out, Juliet wasn’t picked out. You don’t pick out the rain that soaks you to a skin when you come out of a concert.

Julio Cortazar

We picked their cotton. We cooked their food. We nursed their babies. Now we can run their cities. We can run their states. We will run the country.

Jesse Jackson

I am the mayor of Boston, I am a Democrat. But, I am not the mayor of Democratic people in Boston. I am the mayor of Democrats and Republicans, Independents, Tea Party, and the unenrolled. I am the mayor of conservatives and progressives. I am the mayor of all the different races. I am the mayor of the rich and the poor.

Marty Walsh

My grandmother, who picked cotton, and my mom, who picked cotton as a child - my grandmother had a work ethic. She had 13 children that she had to raise and ended up for a time moving into the projects, but because my grandmother had a work ethic, she didn't stay in the projects... that's not how she wanted to raise her children.

Derrick Grayson

Don't you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn't stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included.

Bernice L. McFadden

People get good gigs because they stand up....You don't get picked. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.

Seth Godin

I try to keep my feet on the ground. Even though I appreciate the fame and adoration, I remember once I used to pick cotton, and I felt like even then I was somebody. I have the same feet, hands and heart like everyone else. I'm just also blessed with a good voice.

Charley Pride

My parents would make huge crops of sometimes 55 to 60 bales of cotton. Being from a big family where there were 20 children, it wasn't too hard to pick that much cotton. But my father, year after year, didn't get too much money and I remember he just kept going.

Fannie Lou Hamer

I do like men and I had, you know, a guy in high school that I wanted to marry desperately. He's the mayor of some small town in Texas. I could be the mayor's wife right now.

Ellen DeGeneres

My father was raised in the mountains of New Mexico, and he picked cotton for a dollar a day. He was working for the family from the time he was 7.

Val Kilmer

I grew up hard. I picked cotton and plowed with the mule and fixed the cars and played with the guitar and the piano.

Pinetop Perkins

Paper money is made of cotton, and I'm long cotton, by the way. One reason I'm long cotton is because Dr. Bernanke is out there running the printing presses as fast as he can.