I went almost naked to see that my mother was kept decent and treated as a human being for the first time in all of her life.

When I liberate others, I liberate myself.

Actually since the Convention I have gotten so many letters that I have tried to answer but every letter said they thought this decision, not to accept the compromise, was so important. There wasn't one letter I have gotten so far that said we should have accepted the compromise - not one.

One of the things I remember as a child: There was a man named Joe Pulliam. He was a great Christian man; but one time, he was living with a white family and this white family robbed him of what he earned. They didn't pay him anything. This white man gave him $150 to go to the hill, (you see, I lived in the Black Belt of Mississippi)... to get another Negro family. Joe Pulliam knew what this white man had been doing to him so he kept the $150 and didn't go.

Christianity is being concerned about [others], not building a million-dollar church while people are starving right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I get my strength.

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.

Nobody's free until everybody's free.