A Quote by Ella Baker

After the '57 initial meeting - I was up this way working, not as a staff person - there became the need for a much more definite organized office. What you'd had prior to that time were these big meetings in different places, and there was nobody to pull anything together. Everything was left to [Martin Luther] King and the group that was around him.

Ella Baker

Quote Topics

After Anything Around Became Big Definite Different Different Place Different Places Everything Group Had Him His Way Initial King Left Luther Martin Meeting Meetings More Much Need Nobody Office Organized Person Places Prior Pull Staff Time Together Up Way Were Working

Quote Author

Ella Baker
American - Activist
December 13, 1903 - December 13, 1986

Martin Luther King, with whom I worked very closely, became very distressed when a number of the ministers working for him wanted him to dismiss me from his staff because of my homosexuality.

Bayard Rustin

Martin Luther King really was a safety valve for white people. Any time it appeared that the black community was on the verge of really doing what we ought to do based on having been attacked, they put Martin Luther King on television. He was always saying, "We must use nonviolence. We must overcome hate with love." White people loved that. That's why they gave him a Nobel Prize. But when Martin Luther King started condemning the Vietnam War, that's when white people turned against him.

Ernie Chambers

When I was 15 years old in the tenth grade, I heard Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at the time. As I got more and more involved, I saw politics as a means of bringing about change

John Lewis

When I was 15 years old and in the tenth grade, I heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at that time. As I got more and more involved, I saw politics as a means of bringing about change.

John Lewis

What is accurately portrayed is the rich humanity not just of Martin Luther King but of the movement, which was a multiracial movement. You had blacks and whites coming together and sacrificing, organizing and mobilizing the world. That's the first time we've had collective action put at the center of any kind of portrayal of Martin King on the screen.

Cornel West

I'm not Martin Luther King. I can't be Martin Luther King. The only thing I can do is present what I feel the essence of Martin Luther King is.

Anthony Mackie

My all-time heroes are Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., two men who had to really work to achieve what they did. And I had the privilege of meeting them both.

Monte Irvin

A lot of these things in this world were only a dream for Martin Luther King. Not a one-term, but a two-term African-American president. And this is a terrible country? That was a dream for Martin Luther King.

Dabo Swinney

Martin Luther King said it was time to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of human civilization. I don't think anyone is calling Martin Luther King a New Age woo-woo.

Marianne Williamson

The white man supports Reverend Martin Luther King, subsidizes Reverend Martin Luther King, so that Reverend Martin Luther King can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless - that's what you mean by nonviolent - be defenseless in the face of one of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken people into captivity - that's this American white man, and they have proved it throughout the country by the police dogs and the police clubs.

Malcolm X

The American Dream is individualistic. Martin Luther King's dream was collective. The American Dream says, "I can engage in upward mobility and live the good life." King's dream was fundamentally Christian. His commitment to radical love had everything to do with his commitment to Jesus of Nazareth, and his dream had everything to do with community, with a "we" consciousness that included poor and working people around the world, not just black people.

Cornel West

The White man pays Reverend Martin Luther King so that Martin Luther King can keep the Negro defenseless.

Malcolm X

Without Coretta Scott King, there would not have been a Martin Luther King, Jr. in the way that we know him.

Coretta Scott King

I need to hear something about how he`s going to bring people together in the spirit, hopefully, of Martin Luther King Jr., and if that`s not heard, then we`ve got to constantly challenge him.

Al Sharpton

What got me motivated was my dad's idea that I go to Morehouse College in Atlanta. It's an all-black, all-male school. Martin Luther King went there. The most famous person in my class was Spike Lee. And I really caught fire. I was so inspired by the people around me that I went from C's and D's to straight A's by the time I left.