Words matter. These are the best James Meredith Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Have you ever heard of Irish, Poles, Germans, Italians and Jews being integrated? They go anywhere and just enjoy their rights. Why call it integration when black folks do the same thing? It’s a con job.
Only whites were allowed by law and practice to attend the University of Mississippi – a public institution supported by public dollars. Anything public and supported by public dollars is for me.
Liberal whites are the greatest enemy of African Americans.
Do you know how big of an insult that is to me – to say that I had to be brave to confront some ignorant white folks?
Nothing is a bigger waste of time than regretting the past and worrying about the future.
Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.
If black people use their resources properly, they can become as competitive as any group in society – take control of our neighborhoods, our businesses, our schools, including our teachers. The only thing keeping black people from doing it is this idiotic idea about integration, about being racially balanced.
I had developed a specifically calculated plan to break the system of white supremacy. My theory was that since Mississippi was the place, this was the ultimate: Mississippi was the place you had to break it.
It is an insult for me to have been alive through the times you are calling the so-called civil rights movement. I don’t celebrate my humiliations and my insults.
I considered myself engaged in a war from Day One. And my objective was to force the federal government – the Kennedy administration at that time – into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen.
Only the family of God can solve the problems of our time.
I was taught to believe that the most dishonorable thing a Meredith could do was work in a white woman’s kitchen and take care of a white man’s child. I knew I would starve to death rather than do either.
You gotta understand – the state of Mississippi was in rebellion. It had rebelled against the United States. Now that has been a very difficult story for America to tell, but that’s what actually happened.
‘Blacks were too scared to do anything, but they came out to greet James Meredith’: That would have been the story in the evening news if I hadn’t gotten myself shot. I got shot, and that allowed the movement protest thing to take over then and do their thing.
