Respect me, or put me to death.

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire... or preserve his freedom.

They asked if I knew what 'conscientious objector' meant. I told them that when the white man asked me to go off somewhere and fight and maybe die to preserve the way the white man treated the black man in America, then my conscience made me object.

It is the system itself that, that is incapable of producing freedom for the twenty-two million Afro-Americans. Just like a chicken can't lay a duck egg, a chicken can't lay a duck egg, because the system of the chicken isn't constructed in the way to produce a duck egg. And just as that chicken system can't produce, is not capable to, of producing a duck egg, the political and economic system of this country is absolutely incapable of producing freedom and justice and equality and human dignity for the twenty-two million Afro-Americans.

I mean a real police state just to get a token recognition of a law. It take, it took, I think, 15,000 troops and 6 million dollars to put one negro in the University of Mississippi. That's a police action, police state action.

Whenever any group can vote in a bloc, and decide the outcome of elections, and it fails to do this, then that group is politically sick.

The problem of the negro is so criminal that many individuals and organizations are going to have to sacrifice what they call their organizational principles if someone comes up with a solution that will really solve the problem.