A Quote by Marian Wright Edelman

It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success.

Marian Wright Edelman

Quote Topics

Food Health Care Civil Civil Rights Clear Could Exercise Get Going Health Care Jobs Kicked Lawyer Me Means Mississippi Off People Plantations Rights Schools Success Those Very Were

Quote Author

Marian Wright Edelman
American - Activist
Born: June 6, 1939

In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married - we became an interracial couple.

Alice Walker

Along with the fight to desegregate schools, we must desegregate the entire cultural statement of America, we must desegregate the minds of the American people or we will find that we have won the battle and lost the war.

John Oliver Killens

If we dont figure out a way to create equity, real equity, of opportunity and access, to good schools, housing, health care, and decent paying jobs, were not going to survive as a productive and healthy society.

Tim Wise

There was a long time in my professional life that I was not happy, and there was nothing anyone else could have done to make me happy. There was a big stretch where I was very sick, and I was very hurt. Those charged with taking care of my health and well-being weren't very good at their jobs. Or maybe they were too good at their jobs.

CM Punk

It's really important to say this. Often the faith schools were founded before the state provided education. I want good education in this country so I'm not going to slag off faith schools. I think that it's important that people of different backgrounds and different faiths go to school together and many faith schools do that.

Ed Miliband

My schools were quite diverse - those who serve their country come from every race and religion - and so the military schools I attended were a wonderful melting pot.

Marcia Gay Harden

President Obama is a man who had certain advantages because of the civil rights movement. He had the opportunity to go to some of the best schools in this country - schools that train you how to run the political paradigm, not challenge it. The leaders of the Black Power Movement were challenging that paradigm.

Danny Glover

I want some help on this. I'm being very honest, i want some ideas, as somebody who was arrested 50 years ago fighting for Civil Rights trying to desegregate schools in Chicago, who spent his whole life fighting against racism, I want your ideas. What do you think we can do? What can we do?

Bernie Sanders

The successes of the LGBT civil rights movement and the more prominent role openly gay people are playing in the public eye has actually turned up the temperature in middle schools and high schools for queer kids.

Dan Savage

If by a "Liberal," they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say that I'm a "Liberal."

John F. Kennedy

Finally, it is important to make it clear that imagination is not an exercise for those detached from reality, those who live in the air. On the contrary, when we imagine something, we do it necessarily conditioned by a lack in our concrete reality. When children imagine free and happy schools, it is because their real schools deny them freedom and happiness.

Paulo Freire

I started off as a young lawyer working against discrimination against African-American children in schools and in the criminal justice system. I worked to make sure that kids with disabilities could get a public education, something that I care very much about. I have worked with Latinos - one of my first jobs in politics was down in south Texas registering Latino citizens to be able to vote. So I have a deep devotion to making sure that an every American feels like he or she has a place in our country.

Hillary Clinton

Apparently almost anyone can do a better job of educating children than our so-called 'educators' in the public schools. Children who are home-schooled by their parents also score higher on tests than children educated in the public schools. ... Successful education shows what is possible, whether in charter schools, private schools, military schools or home-schooling. The challenge is to provide more escape hatches from failing public schools, not only to help those students who escape, but also to force these institutions to get their act together before losing more students and jobs.

Thomas Sowell

There were people in the South who were ardently opposed to slavery. And maybe, if we get into truth and reconciliation, those will be the people we want to name schools and streets after.

Bryan Stevenson

I was raised in public schools, but from the word go, I never believed what the public schools were teaching me. Nor did I like the fact that they were fighting for the historical tradition of England.