This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen.

Artists are the gate keepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.

Art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.

I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America.

As Americans, preserving the best of our traditions, we have the right- nay the duty-to fight for participation in the forward march of humanity

When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest.

The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people.