Top 88 Segregation Quotes

I still remember, at the age of 12, learning that segregation had been permitted only a couple of decades before I was born and that a woman‘s right to vote was not even a century old. But it was great Americans who stood up, some dying for the cause, to make our country better.

Marriage is an institution fits in perfect harmony with the laws of nature; whereas systems of slavery and segregation were designed to brutally oppress people and thereby violated the laws of nature.

Gothenburg is the Baltimore or Liverpool or Marseille of Sweden – plagued by the death of wharfs and other industries, and with complex segregation of the populace from southern Europe, which once brought in a labor force that suddenly found itself living in remote projects without jobs.

We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free.

Slavery was legal. Japanese interment was legal in this country. Segregation was legal.

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.

Things were tough. Segregation was all around – in the schools, the buses, the restaurants, the theaters. But Dr. King worked hard for black people to have a fair share.

There was never a time you could get the majority of people in Alabama or Mississippi, or even southern Delaware, to vote to end segregation. What changed things was the rule of law, the courts. Brown v. Board of Education was ushered in by a movement, but it was a legal decision.

We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.

The grand irony, however, is that Southern segregation was not brought to an end, nor redneck violence dramatically reduced, by violence.

For me, the real earth is that chosen part of the universe, still almost universally dispersed and in course of gradual segregation, but which is little by little taking on body and form in Christ.

In a sense, mass incarceration has emerged as a far more extreme form of physical and residential segregation than Jim Crow segregation. Rather than merely shunting people of color to the other side of town, people are locked in literal cages – en masse.

The transition between life in red-state America and life in the Arab capital was at times overwhelming because of the traditional segregation of men and women in many public and private settings.

I think segregation is bad, I think it’s wrong, it’s immoral. I’d fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don’t need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that.

Most whites live, grow, play, learn, love, work and die primarily in social and geographic racial segregation. Yet, our society does not teach us to see this as a loss. Pause for a moment and consider the magnitude of this message: We lose nothing of value by having no cross-racial relationships.

Historically, mass demonstrations have worked best at shifting public opinion and pressuring the powers-that-be when organizers highlighted one concrete demand: ‘Bring Our Boys Home from Vietnam‘; ‘End Segregation Now’; ‘Support Women’s Right to Choose.’

In today‘s world, access to the Internet is inarguably critical to function in informal and formal spaces – and the costs to digital segregation are rising.

Segregation, in a sense, helped create and maintain black solidarity.

This idea of walls, segregation, labels, and ‘You against us’ and ‘We are superior and you are inferior.’ Which people are legitimate? Which relationships are legitimate or not? Who declares that under which authority? These are things that are hugely important.

There shouldn’t be a segregation of women over a size 16, it should just be all women who want to wear beautiful clothes.

Denying that race matters is irrational in the face of segregation and all of the other forms of obvious racial inequity in society… Maintaining this denial of reality takes tremendous emotional and psychic energy.

Contact is the best medicine against hate, racism and prejudice. It’s something that we should be very wary of, the more segregation we have, the more of a problem that’s going to be.

It’s good that segregation is over.

Attacking school segregation requires all hands on deck. We in the charter sector must move beyond our traditional comfort zone, serving disadvantaged students, and meet the demands of parents who have other high quality options.

Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.

Antoine ‘Fats‘ Domino was a 1950s rock n’ roll pioneer, a larger-than-life New Orleans figure, and a role model for the African-American community in a time of deep segregation.

When it comes to discrimination, Americans pride ourselves on how far we’ve come. Racial segregation is history. Explicit sex discrimination is banned. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. But amidst all the progress, the male-female wage gap persists, and it’s big.

Segregation never brought anyone anything except trouble.

South Africa is labouring to find its revolutionary path; the colours of the Rainbow Nation have difficulty blending together; the wealthy elites (white, black or Indian) profit from de facto segregation.

This whole segregation between famous people and other people is complete rubbish.

I vividly remember segregation – separate schools, sitting in the balcony at the movie theater, being barred from the public swimming pool.

We’re now segregating our schools based on economics; we’re segregating our schools based on where a child‘s parents live. And it has the same corrosive effect of destroying people’s opportunity as racial segregation did.

This kind of ‘separate but equal,’ I’ve seen what it’s done in the history here in America, and it didn’t work. And it still hasn’t worked, I mean, even in continued segregation of our schools, which has increased with the privatization of our school system.

I come up in a segregated 1943 atmosphere of segregation.

Segregation has never been a shadowy, impossible-to-pin-down conspiracy. It’s been an American way of life.

In England, more than in any comparable country, those who are born poor are more likely to stay poor, and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege. For those of us who believe in social justice, this stratification and segregation are morally indefensible.

America preaches integration and practices segregation.

Hollywood has successfully produced many films framed by anti-racist or pro-integrationist story lines. I’m going to guess that since ‘Gone With The Wind,’ Hollywood realized films about racism and segregation pull at the heartstrings of everyone and hopefully serve to purge a sense of guilt.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

The March on Washington affirmed our values as a people: equality and opportunity for all. Forty-one years ago, during a time of segregation, these were an ideal.

We should not forget that in the ’60s, George Wallace’s motto was ‘segregation forever,’ and that he did nothing to deter bombings and other acts of violence and, by his actions, condoned them.

I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.

Segregation is not exclusion.

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can’t believe how much it’s a part of your thinking.

I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights.

America was built on segregation. It’s gonna stay segregated until everyone’s equal, and that ain’t gonna happen when it’s a capitalistic society.

Either we want to have segregation or integration. And if we don’t want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the Image Awards, where you’re only awarded if you’re black.

I just want to be really clear about this: Anyone who has read Colin Powell’s biography – there’s an entire section where he talks about experiencing segregation. Colin Powell did not appear when he became head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That’s not how it happened.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

What is our greatest enemy? Segregation.

From slavery to segregation, we remember that America did not always live up to its ideals. In fact, we often fell far short of them. But we also learned that fundamental to our national character is the drive to live out the true meaning of our creed.

What we cannot deny is that there’s an association between exclusion, segregation, non-violent extremist thinking, and jihadism.

The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.

During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.

MLK, Jr. taught me how to say no to segregation, and I can hear him saying now… when you straighten up your back, no man can ride you. He said stand up straight and say no to racial discrimination.

I grew up in a time when there was real segregation. And blacks during the 50s and so forth took a lot of responsibility for their lives because the government didn’t.

It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.

You should concentrate on the segregation of waste, especially kitchen waste. Only after segregation the waste becomes useful and it can be recycled.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

There was an email forwarded to me from a first-grade teacher, and she said she was teaching them civil rights for MLK weekend, and a little first-grader stood up, and he said, ‘I can explain segregation,’ and proceeded to explain all the scenes from ‘Hidden Figures.’ And I died because that’s everything.

Some people criticize the faithful for getting involved in politics, but it’s important to remember that down through the centuries, people motivated by their faith have done many important things. Martin Luther King Jr. – motivated by his faith – brought about an end to segregation in our country.

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

Blacks have experienced a history of victimization in America, beginning obviously in slavery and then another 100 years of segregation. I grew up in segregation. I know very well what it was about and all of the difficulties it placed on black life, and how we were truly held down before the civil-rights movement.

Multiculturalism for any western country is a massive issue. The lack of integration, the increase of crime, violence, and mistrust in society, the segregation created due to mass immigration, these are only the beginning phases of something I fear will almost certainly get more worse and violent.

Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!

Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Segregation in the South is honest, open and aboveboard. Of the two systems, or styles of segregation, the Northern and the Southern, there is no doubt whatever in my mind which is the better.

I find the aristocratic parts of London so unattractive and angular; the architecture is so white and gated. But in New York, it’s different – even uptown it’s really grand, and there’s no real segregation there. It’s all mixed up.

In the United States, the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems, was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans.

In many ways, history is marked as ‘before’ and ‘after’ Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.

In this country, there is a segregation of Black Turks and White Turks. Your brother Tayyip belongs to the Black Turks.

You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it’s hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.

An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there’s no longer segregation in America’s schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.

Happily, the days when overt racial discrimination and segregation were championed by social conservatives are long past.

I am not naive, and I do realize that racism is alive and well in the United States of America. I am also fully aware that when segregation ended, we didn’t all live happily ever after. No one can convince me, however, that life in America would be better if blacks and whites had stayed separate and unequal.

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks.

Segregation was a burden for many blacks, because the end of the civil war and the amendments added to the constitution elevated expectations beyond reality in some respects.

And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.

When I think about our HBCUs, I think of icons like my mentor Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina State graduate, who fought against discrimination and segregation, and continues to champion for civil rights and equality.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott began in December 1955, and by 1956 NAACP leaders came to me and asked me to be part of a lawsuit they wanted to file on my behalf and that of three other women, to challenge segregation on public buses.

There should be no segregation. Everyone should be united, and everyone should be seen as equals.

I’ve never said that you should have segregation of the school system or any other.

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn’t like it.

I would say the country is a different country. It is a better country. The signs I saw when I was growing up are gone and they will not return. In many ways the walls of segregation have been torn down.

We have always policed the bodies of people of color, and black people in particular. The Jim Crow South is a classic example. White flight in the North. School segregation. Gerrymandering.

Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country.

I didn’t actually realise what apartheid meant. I’m probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses.