You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.
The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.
As long as God gives me strength to work and try to make things real for my children, I'm going to work for it - even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice.
It may sound funny, but I love the South. I don't choose to live anywhere else. There's land here, where a man can raise cattle, and I'm going to do it some day.
If we don't like what the Republicans do, we need to get in there and change it.
Let me appeal to the consciences of many silent, responsible citizens of the white community who know that a victory for democracy in Jackson will be a victory for democracy everywhere.
I was born in Decatur, was raised there, but I never in my life was permitted to vote there.
The six of us gathered at my house, and we walked to the polls. I'll never forget it. Not a Negro was on the streets, and when we got to the courthouse, the clerk said he wanted to talk with us. When we got into his office, some 15 or 20 armed white men surged in behind us - men I had grown up with, had played with.
I plan to live on campus in a dormitory and to do all the things any other student of the law school might do: use the library, eat in the dining hall, attend classes.
Except for teachers, who are 'controlled' as far as his militancy is concerned, good jobs are rare for Negroes.
First it was the whites, and then their Negro message bearers. And the word was always the same: 'Tell your sons to take their names off the books. Don't show up at the courthouse voting day.'
I remember one of them - it was a 1941 black Ford. As it went by very slow, a guy leaned out with a shotgun, keeping a bead on us all the time, and we just had to walk slowly and wait for him to kill us... They didn't kill us, but they didn't end it, either.