Segregation Quotes

“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Fiction has been maligned for centuries as being "false," "untrue," yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction.”
― Clark Zlotchew

“All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!”
― Rudyard Kipling, Debits And Credits

“When they reached their ship, Ed gazed out at the bay. It was black. The sky was black, but the bay was even blacker. It was a slick, oily blackness that glowed and reflected the moonlight like a black jewel. Ed saw the tiny specks of light around the edges of the bay where he knew ships must be docked, and at different points within the bay where vessels would be anchored. The lights were pale and sickly yellow when compared with the bright blue-white sparkle of the stars overhead, but the stars glinted hard as diamonds, cold as ice. Pg. 26.”
― Clark Zlotchew, Once upon a Decade: Tales of the Fifties

“UNDIVIDED

I am for
One world undivided.
One world without fear and corruption.
One world ruled by Truth and Justice.

I am for
One peaceful world for all,
Where hate has been overcome by love,
And everyone is guided only
By their conscience.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Music itself was color-blind but the media and the radio stations segregate it based on their perceptions of the artists.”
― Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue

“So when we looked at de picture and everybody got pointed out there wasn’t nobody left except a real dark little girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. Dat’s where Ah wuz’s s’posed to be, but Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark chile as me. So ah ast, ‘where is me? Ah don’t see me.’
… ‘Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!’
Den dey all laughed real hard. But before Ah seen de picture Ah thought Ah wuz just like the rest.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negroid than herself in direct ratio to their negroness…Like the pecking order in a chicken yard… Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Crossing a single street transformed the way people talked, determined the size and condition of the homes, the dimension and character of the dreams.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“Wild animals look good in the jungle, not in the Oval Office.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“With Selma and the Voting Rights Act one phase of development in the civil rights revolution came to an end. A new phase opened, but few observers realized it or were prepared for its implications. For the vast majority of white Americans, the past decade—the first phase—had been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not of equality. White America was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the lash of brutality and coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed to helping him out of poverty, exploitation or all forms of discrimination. The outraged white citizen had been sincere when he snatched the whips from the Southern sheriffs and forbade them more cruelties. But when this was to a degree accomplished, the emotions that had momentarily inflamed him melted away. White Americans left the Negro on the ground and in devastating numbers walked off with the aggressor. It appeared that the white segregationist and the ordinary white citizen had more in common with one another than either had with the Negro.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“Thus through two centuries a continuous indoctrination of Americans has separated people according to mythically superior and inferior qualities while a democratic spirit of equality was evoked as the national ideal. These concepts of racism, and this schizophrenic duality of conduct, remain deeply rooted in American thought today. This tendency of the nation to take one step forward on the question of racial justice and then to take a step backward is still the pattern. Just as an ambivalent nation freed the slaves a century ago with no plan or program to make their freedom meaningful, the still ambivalent nation in 1954 declared school segregation unconstitutional with no plan or program to make integration real. Just as the Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1868 and refused to enforce it, the Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1964 and to this day has failed to enforce it in all its dimensions. Just as the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 proclaimed Negro suffrage, only to permit its de facto withdrawal in half the nation, so in 1965 the Voting Rights Law was passed and then permitted to languish with only fractional and halfhearted implementation.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“The end result is that the United States is today a more segregated country in many respects than it was twenty years ago. Problems of education, transportation to jobs and decent living conditions are all made difficult because housing is so rigidly segregated. The expansion of suburbia and migration from the South have worsened big-city segregation. The suburbs are white nooses around the black necks of the cities. Housing deteriorates in central cities; urban renewal has been Negro removal and has benefited big merchants and real estate interests; and suburbs expand with little regard for what happens to the rest of America.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“It wasn't just this street that she was afraid of or that was bad. It was any street where people were packed together like sardines in a can.

And it wasn't just this city. It was any city where they set up a line and say black folks stay on this side and white folks on this side, so that the black folks were crammed on top of each other—jammed and packed and forced into the smallest possible space until they were completely cut off from light and air.

It was any place where the women had to work to support the families because the men couldn't get jobs and the men got bored and pulled out and the kids were left without proper homes because there was nobody around to put a heart into it. Yes. It was any place where people were so damn poor they didn't have time to do anything but work, and their bodies were the only source of relief from the pressure under which they lived; and where the crowding together made the young girls wise beyond their years.

It all added up to the same thing, she decided—white people. She hated them. She would always hate them.”
― Ann Petry, The Street

“There is no life so long as we are divided, life united is life brought to life.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulldozer on Duty

“Oneness is the path,
Oneness is the pedestrian.
Either we are all one,
Or ever-battling barbarian.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Divane Dynamite: Only truth in the cosmos is love

“.. all I've ever wanted for my children was the opportunity soar, no matter their heritage, and to live a life of meaning. That has been my fight. But in our current society with our current laws, it's enough that you succeed, that you are able to follow your passion in your work, that you leave a legacy that will benefit the multitudes - one day, even the colored multitudes.”
― Marie Benedict,Victoria Christopher Murray

“Listen, Junto,' he said. 'They can wave flags. They can tell me the Germans cut off baby's behinds and rape women and turn black men into slaves. They can tell me any damn thing. None of it means nothing.'

'Why?'

'Because, no matter how scared they are of Germans, they're still more scared of me. I'm black, see? And they hate Germans, but they hate me worse. If that wasn't so they wouldn't have a separate army for black men.”
― Ann Petry, The Street

“Now, the District was in the throes of slow but steady revital- ization and revival, driven on the backbone of the Kansas City African American community’s strong cultural roots, immense pride, art, community, baseball, barbecue, booze, and jazz. Historically segregated, but always shared by Black society. How different from the White society whose historical dividing line began just blocks away. Also historically segregated, but rarely shared.”
― Mark Shaiken, Fresh Start

“Another barrier fell in the Pacific theater in the spring of 1944, when the 24th Infantry Regiment and the 93rd Infantry Division became the first Black infantry troops to see combat in the war. Black infantry troops arrived as reinforcements on Bougainville Island, halfway between New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, after the majority of Japanese soldiers had been defeated.”
― Matthew F Delmont, Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home

“Brain divisive is brain insane.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion

“Mr. Lewis, how am I going to feel better in the morning when I know that snake is probably sitting in my living room right now, that shotgun across his lap, watching television?'
'You don't have to worry about that,' Tommy said. 'Ain't nothing good on television this time of night.”
― Walter Dean Myers, The Glory Field

“When I arrived at this all-white school that first day, all the white parents rushed in and pulled out their kids. They didn't want their children going to school with me. But why? I didn't understand. They had never met or even seen me before now, so how could they know what kind of person I was? But none of that mattered. I don't think they even saw a child. All they saw was the color of my skin. I was black, and that meant I didn't matter.”
― Ruby Bridges, This Is Your Time

“Only sin in the world is the sin of division.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Running was the only sport that could not be segregated by the government, could not be kept down by oppression, could not be bought out from under the feet of my peers. They could not, you see - they could not segregate the roads. Not during the day, anyway.”
― Barbara Bourland, The Force of Such Beauty

“Discrimination is only symptom, distance is the culprit.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Contaminate not the sweetness of soul,
with foul stench of segregated psyche.
Better stand civilized, without roots,
than be sentenced to inherited slavery.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Delade är vi aska,
förenade är vi hjältar.
Integrerade vi lever,
Segregerade är vi döda.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Världsviking: Gudomlig Poesi

“It was against the law for a colored person and a white person to play checkers together in Birmingham. White and colored gamblers had to place their bets at separate windows and sit in separate aisles at racetracks in Arkansas. At saloons in Atlanta, the bars were segregated: Whites drank on stools at one end of the bar and blacks on stools at the other end, until the city outlawed even that, resulting in white-only and colored-only saloons. There were white parking spaces and colored parking spaces in the town square in Calhoun City, Mississippi. In one North Carolina courthouse, there was a white Bible and a black Bible to swear to tell the truth on.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

“Tolerate no hate,
Moderate no help.
Segregate no shelf,
Alienate no sect.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets