Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with hu...man rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the... other fellow to make the first move--and he, in turn, waits for you. The minute a person whose word means a great deal dares to take the open- hearted and courageous way, many others follow. Not everyone can be turned aside from meanness and hatred, but the great majority of Americans is heading in that direction. I have a great belief in the future of my people and my country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It... begins in woman's soul.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal ...is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and... manifested very much in the same way. The Negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to the Negro in civil rights. The woman may sit at the same table and eat with the white man; the free Negro may hold property and vote. The woman may sit in the same pew with the white man in church; the free Negro may enter the pulpit and preach. Now, with the black man's right to suffrage, the right unquestioned, even by Paul, to minister at the altar, it is evident that the prejudice against sex is more deeply rooted and unreasonably maintained than that against color ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Negro has no name. He is Cuffy Douglas or Cuffy Brooks, just whose Cuffy he may chance to be. The Woman has no name. She is Mr...s. Richard Roe or Mrs. John Doe, just whose Mrs. she may chance to be. Cuffy has no right to his earnings; he can not buy or sell, or lay up. Mrs. Roe has no right to her earnings; she can neither buy nor sell, make contracts, nor lay up anything that she can call her own. Cuffy has no right to his children; they can be sold from him at any time. Mrs. Roe has no right to her children; they may be bound out to cancel a father's debt of honor. The unborn child, even by the last will of the father, may be placed under the guardianship of a stranger and a foreigner. Cuffy has no legal existence; he is subject to restraint and moderate chastisement. Mrs. Roe has no legal existence; she has not the best right to her own person. The husband has the power to restrain, and administer moderate chastisement.... The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The Negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to the (free) Negro in civil rights.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify eve...ry page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is t...he mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not wish to believe that the courts were made for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely; but think of leaving it to a...ny court in the land to decide whether more than three millions of people, in this case a sixth part of a nation, have a right to be freemen or not! But it has been left to the courts of justice, so called,--to the Supreme Court of the land,--and, as you all know, recognizing no authority but the Constitution, it has decided that the three millions are and shall continue to be slaves. Such judges as these are merely the inspectors of a pick- lock and murderer's tools, to tell him whether they are in working order or not, and there they think that their responsibility ends.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some of us who sit upon this platform have many a time been clamored down, and told that we had no right to speak, and that we wer...e out of our place in public meetings; far be it from us, when women assemble, and a man has a thought in his soul, burning for utterance, to retaliate upon him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »