Only time [JF] Kennedy made any, took any action to even look like he identified with negroes was when he was forced to. Kennedy didn't even make his speech based on this problem being a moral issue until Negroes exploded in Birmingham.

We didn't land on plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us".

A hundred years ago the American white men used to put on a white sheet and use a bloodhound against Negroes. Today they have taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms and traded in the bloodhounds for police dogs, and they're still doing the same thing.

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

The white man will keep on granting tokenism; a few big Negroes will get big jobs, but the black masses will catch hell as long as they stay in the white man's house.

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress.