A black woman's body was never hers alone.
This white man who is saying "it takes time." For three hundred and more years they have had "time," and now it is time for them to listen.
If the white man gives you anything - just remember when he gets ready he will take it right back. We have to take for ourselves.
if I fall, I will fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.
America that is divided against itself cannot stand, and we cannot say we have all of this unity they say we have when black people are being discriminated against in every city in America I have visited.
But you see now baby, whether you have a ph.d., d.d. or no d, we're in this bag together. And whether you are from Morehouse or Nohouse, we,re still in this bag together.
To support whatever is right, and to bring in justice where weve had so much injustice.
Actually, the world and America is upset and the only way to bring about a change is to upset it more.
It is our right to stay here and we will stay and stand up for what belongs to us as American citizens, because they can't say that we haven't had patience.
just because people are fat, it doesn't mean they are well fed. The cheapest foods are the fattening ones, not the most nourishing.
People have got to get together and work together. I'm tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.
White Americans today don't know what in the world to do because when they put us behind them, that's where they made their mistake... they put us behind them, and we watched every move they made.
[On her Freedom Farm Cooperative:] If you give a hungry man food, he will eat it. [But] if you give him land, he will grow his own food.
I saw in Chicago, on the street where I was visiting my sister-in-law, this "Urban Renewal" and it means one thing: "Negro removal." But they want to tear the homes down and put a parking lot there. Where are those people going? Where will they go? And as soon as Negroes take to the street demonstrating, one hears people say, "they shouldn't have done it." The world is looking at America and it is really beginning to show up for what it is really like. "Go Tell It on the Mountain." We can no longer ignore this, that America is not "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
Some things I found out in the National Convention I wasn't too glad I did find out. But we will work hard, and it was important to actually really bring this out to the open, the things I will say some people knew about and some people didn't; this stuff that has been kept under the cover for so many years. Actually, the world and America is upset and the only way to bring about a change is to upset it more.
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.
[My father] did get enough money to buy mules. We didn't have tractors, but he bought mules, wagons, cultivators and some farming equipment. As soon as he bought that and decided to rent some land, because it was always better if you rent the land, but as soon as he got the mules and wagons and everything, somebody went to our trough - a white man who didn't live very far from us - and he fed the mules Paris Green, put it in their food and it killed the mules and our cows.
We have been listening year after year to [white people] and what have we got? We are not even allowed to think for ourselves. "I know what is best for you," but they don't know what is best for us! It is time now to let them know what they owe us, and they owe us a great deal.
It is only when we speak what is right that we stand a chance at night of being blown to bits in our homes. Can we call this a free country, when I am afraid to go to sleep in my own home in Mississippi?... I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be a part of setting the Negro free in Mississippi.
You know the Scripture says "be not deceived for God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sow that shall he also reap." And one day, I don't know how they're going to get it, but they're going to get some of it back. They are scared to death and are more afraid now than we are.
We didn't come all the way up here to compromise for no more than we’d gotten here. We didn't come all this way for no two seats, 'cause all of us is tired.
I do remember, one time, a man came to me after the students began to work in Mississippi and he said the white people were getting tired and they were getting tense and anything might happen. Well, I asked him "how long he thinks we had been getting tired"? I have been tired for 46 years and my parents was tired before me and their parents were tired, and I have always wanted to do something that would help some of the things I would see going on among Negroes that I didn't like and I don't like now.
I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.
A white man killed the mules and our cows that knocked us right back down. And things got so tough then I began to wish I was white.
We serve God by serving our fellow man; kids are suffering from malnutrition. People are going to the fields hungry. If you are a Christian, we are tired of being mistreated.
