Great Throughts Treasury

"You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea."

"Freedom has never been free."

"I graduated pretty quickly. When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never said a word in public. I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes and I can see those clothes now in my mind's eye.... But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church. No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes.... Just before I went into the Army I began wondering how long I could stand it. I used to watch the Saturday night sport of white men trying to run down a Negro with their car, or white gangs coming through town to beat up a Negro."

"Hate is a wasteful emotion, most of the people you hate don't know you hate them and the rest don't care"

"I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart. And I would die, die gladly, if that would make a better life for them."

"In the racial picture things will never be as they once were. History has reached a turning point, here and over the world."

"Our only hope is to control the vote."

"If we don't like what the Republicans do, we need to get in there and change it."

"Racism, pollution and the rest of it are themselves very close to extinction."

"Kindness and compassion toward all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people."

"When a black Jacksonian looks about his home community, he sees a city of over 150,000, of which 40% is Negro, in which there is not a single Negro policeman or policewoman, school crossing guard, or fireman."

"The gifts of God should be enjoyed by all citizens in Mississippi."

"When you hate, the only person who suffers is you. Because those you hate probably don't know, and those who do, don't care."