Top 1200 Civil Rights Act Quotes & Sayings

Do you care about climate justice? Are you about women's rights and women's reproductive rights? Do you care about civil liberties and the Voting Rights Act? There are so many opportunities for people to go back and be inspired and plug into their own community.

A black man of my generation born in the late 1960s is more than twice as likely to go to prison in his lifetime then a black man of my father's generation. I was born after the Voting Rights Act, after the Civil Rights Act, after the Fair Housing Act.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society.

The most significant civil rights problem is voting. Each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 make it the responsibility of the Department of Justice to protect that right.

For black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals to support the racist practices of the University of Michigan amounts to no less than a gross betrayal of the civil rights principles of our historic struggle from slavery to the final guarantee of constitutional rights to all Americans. Indeed, it was practices like those of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement.

[Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964], many governments in southern states forced people to segregate by race. Civil rights advocates fought to repeal these state laws, but failed. So they appealed to the federal government, which responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But this federal law didn't simply repeal state laws compelling segregation. It also prohibited voluntary segregation. What had been mandatory became forbidden. Neither before nor after the Civil Rights Act were people free to make their own decisions about who they associated with.

Even here in America, people are fighting for civil rights 45 years after the civil rights movement.

Historians have often censored civil rights activists' commitment to economic issues and misrepresented the labor and civil rights movements as two separate, sometimes adversarial efforts. But civil rights and workers' rights are two sides of the same coin.

There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights. Dr. King did not stir us to move for our civil rights to have them taken away in these kinds of fashions.

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.

It was clear to me as a civil rights leader in the '60s that unless we put the social and economic underpinnings beneath the political and the civil rights, we wouldn't go anywhere.

Persistence. Change doesn't happen overnight. You have to stay with it. Rosa Parks helped start the Civil Rights movement in earnest in 1955. Then it was nearly a decade until the Civil Rights Act was passed.

I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

We can't understand what we've accomplished on civil rights without telling the story of Bayard Rustin. And now, we must write the next chapter in the American civil rights story by drawing strength and inspiration from his moral courage.

When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the modern Southern GOP was born.

Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.

There's this big debate that goes on in America about what rights are: Civil rights, human rights, what they are? it's an artificial debate. Because everybody has rights. Everybody has rights - I don't care who you are, what you do, where you come from, how you were born, what your race or creed or color is. You have rights. Everybody's got rights.

When I taught a civil rights class at the University of Maryland Law School, I would do an exercise with my students. I'd write 'civil rights' on the board and ask them to tell me what immediately came to mind.

In the Catholic view of things, abortion is a justice issue, not an issue of sexual morality... it is a civil rights issue, arguably the greatest civil rights issue of our time.

It's time for Congress to act, restore the Voting Rights Act, and take action to prevent voter disenfranchisem ent. As your next Congresswoman, I will stand up to the extremists in the Republican Party to ensure civil rights are protected for everyone.

When you're fighting for civil rights, it's sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Civil rights are an evolution; and you have to bring people along.

The foundations of modern civil-rights law are exceptionally secure. Conservative judges nibble around the edges sometimes, and people still debate the constitutionality of affirmative-action programs. But almost no one seriously argues about the basic meaning or legitimacy of core civil-rights protections.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation of its day, and included women's rights as part of its reforms. Ironically, the section on women's rights was added by a senator from Virginia who opposed the whole thing and was said to be sure that if he stuck something about womens' rights into it, it would never pass. The bill passed anyway, though, much to the chagrin of a certain wiener from Virginia.

Liberals say this over and over and over again to hide the actual history, which is why I go through the specifics on the big segregationists in the United States Senate, the ones who signed the Southern Manifesto and the ones who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. There's a panoply of issues to consider. The first time they objected to the Federal government doing something was when it came to civil rights legislation. This is in stark contrast to the very few Republicans who voted against the '64 Civil Rights Act.

It was a privilege to serve as the assistant attorney general for civil rights, a role that allowed me to enforce the Civil Rights Act and help make its promise a reality.

No Republican questions or disputes civil rights. I have never wavered in my support for civil rights or the civil rights act.

For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.

This is nothing new. We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Right Act - constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation.

Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results.

Just as the white man and every other person on this earth has God-given rights, natural rights, civil rights, any kind of rights that you can think of, when it comes to defending himself, black people - we should have the right to defend ourselves also.

We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.

They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three civil rights workers were murdered in cold blood. And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they've known ever since it happened, and they've done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain.

I am very proud of the fact that I led the arts contingent on the civil rights march in the summer of '63. In many ways, I think it was the high-water mark of the civil rights movement.

Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together.

The key to understanding the impact of the Human Rights Act in the U.K. is to appreciate that civil liberties and human rights are not two sides of the same coin.

Eventually [black men] are arrested, whether they've committed any serious crime or not, and branded criminals or felons for life. Upon release, they're ushered into a parallel social universe in which the civil and human rights supposedly won during the Civil Rights Movement no longer apply to them.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Civil Rights Act.

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.

My book has a pre - civil rights setting with a post - civil rights sensibility. I believe less and less that there is something called "The Black Experience," though undoubtedly there was one once.

Where race is concerned, America has had a horrible, a wretched history and that came to account in the 1960s, with the Civil Rights victories and Civil Rights Bill and housing and so forth.

I do not believe that defending traditional marriage between one man and one woman excludes anybody or usurps anybody's civil rights and denies anybody their civil rights.

You could not be in the civil rights movement without having an appreciation for everybody's rights. That these rights are not divisible - not something men have and women don't and so on.

I wrote a great deal about the Civil Rights Movement when I was writing for 'The Nation' in the '60s, and also for Esquire magazine. Reading the biography of Coffin, it just reminded me that in those days, when you saw the term 'Christian,' it usually meant people for civil rights and for justice.

The Democrats co-opted the credit for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But if you go back and look at the history, a larger percentage of Republicans voted for that than did Democrats. But a Democrat president signed it, so they co-opted credit for having passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

To me, I know that if we could pass the Civil Rights Act of '64 over 50 years ago, then we can pass Justice for All Civil Rights Act. We can pass Medicare for All.

I would have to say all of the civil rights acts, because there were three, and even, say, the Immigration Act, which I think also is a civil rights act, maybe on a global perspective, that he cared very, very much about it.

When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket.

Everything African-Americans - every freedom they have obtained - came from Republicans, not Democrats. All the way back to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the Civil Rights movement. Civil Rights legislation was passed by a Republican Congress.

Respectfully, the civil rights movement for people with disabilities is modeled on the African American civil rights movement. I'm old enough to remember 1964. I was a junior in high school.

In the South, prior to the Civil Rights movement and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, democracy was the rule. The majority of people were white, and the white majority had little or no respect for any rights which the black minority had relative to property, or even to their own lives. The majority - the mob and occasionally the lynch mob - ruled.

I have a big passion about civil rights for everyone - whoever is being downtrodden at the moment, it doesn't matter: racial discrimination or sexual orientation or gender. Whatever it is, I'm there. I think I was a born civil rights activist. I can't stand the smashing of a community. It's not fair and it's not right.

The rights [to religious freedom] are of the natural rights of mankind, and ... if any act shall be ... passed to repeal [an act granting those rights] or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

In the view of some people, you can only believe in civil rights if you work as a civil rights lawyer. I just don't buy that.

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

There's a great book about John Kennedy and his relationship to civil rights called 'The Bystander.' The title alone suggests that he did as little as possible, any minimal critical effort, to really facilitate civil rights in the White House.

Contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.

I support the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly.

My father's leadership was about more than civil rights. He was deeply concerned with human rights and world peace, and he said so on numerous occasions. He was a civil rights leader, true. But he was increasingly focused on human rights and a global concern and peace as an imperative.

Like the majority of Atlanta's residents, I am Black. Our city helped birth the modern civil rights movement, and I am the daughter of a civil rights leader.