Alabama Quotes - page 5
The Alabama Democratic convention [instructed] its delegates to walk out of the national convention if the party refused to adopt a platform pledging a federal slave code for the territories. Other lower-South Democratic organizations followed suit. In February, Jefferson Davis presented the substance of southern demands to the Senate in resolutions affirming that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common territories.
James M. McPherson
I don't mind telling you this morning that sometimes I feel discouraged. I felt discouraged in Chicago. As I move through Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama, I feel discouraged. Living every day under the threat of death, I feel discouraged sometimes. Living every day under extensive criticisms, even from Negroes, I feel discouraged sometimes.
Martin Luther King Jr.
This is a quality that has appeared often enough in American history - and outside America as well. Senators like Ted Kennedy have been prominent before, bearing names like Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey. Governors like New York Republican Nelson Rockefeller or Alabama Democrat George Wallace. A Congressman like Jack Kemp. Non-office holders like Martin Luther King in the United States or Mohandas Gandhi in India or Nelson Mandela in South Africa (who later became president of his country) can, through sheer force of personality, come to dominate the political scene of the day without ever bearing a single official title.
Ted Kennedy
Oh I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee,
I'm going to Louisiana, my true love for to see
It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry
The sun so hot I froze to death; Susanna, don't you cry.
Oh, Susanna, don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama,
With my banjo on my knee.
Stephen Foster
...The concept of the United States of America is the greatest concept in the world. It's beautiful. It's a wonderful concept. There's no place like America. So, for people to come in and try to fuck that up is ridiculous. I'm a Black man, and I'm telling you this: I've been all over the world. The only places I haven't been are Africa, China, and Russia. Here, people say "African American.” Don't call me no African American. I'm a Black American. [You're not] going to label me to try to say that I don't belong in this country when my people have fought and died to establish this country. Black soldiers have fought and died for this country. They were doing it for Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama. I'm a Black American.
Smokey Robinson
Where are you from?” Sophia asked.
Larry looked a bit startled. "I'm from here...Great-greats came over from Holland."
"You said ‘y'all.'"
Larry was confused....
"What was that about?" Anne-Solenne asked.
"It's totally a Southern way of talking. Iowa is a Northern state. Fought on the Union side in the Civil War. Never had slavery...Northerners don't talk like that, they don't drawl, they don't say ‘y'all'...”
"Or put the Stars and Bars on their bumpers,” said Julian...and pointed at a Confederate flag sticker on the back of Tom and Kevin's truck.
"Point being, it was not like that to my uncle...When he was born, the Civil War was only ninety years in the past-almost within living memory. It would have seemed weird for Northerners to paste the traitors' flag on their bumper or cop an accent from Alabama. But while he was alive-”
"The cultural border shifted north.
Neal Stephenson
As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people, but when it comes to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls murdered, you haven't got any blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it's true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you are going to get violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else you don't even know?
Malcolm X
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave Negroes some part of their rightful dignity, but without the vote it was dignity without strength. Once more the method of nonviolent resistance was unsheathed from its scabbard, and once again an entire community was mobilized to confront the adversary. And again the brutality of a dying order shrieks across the land. Yet, Selma, Alabama, became a shining moment in the conscience of man. If the worst in American life lurked in its dark streets, the best of American instincts arose passionately from across the nation to overcome it. There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I don't mind telling you this morning that sometimes I feel discouraged. I felt discouraged in Chicago. As I move through Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama, I feel discouraged. Living every day under the threat of death, I feel discouraged sometimes. Living every day under extensive criticisms, even from Negroes, I feel discouraged sometimes. Yes, sometimes I feel discouraged and feel my work's in vain. But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.
Martin Luther King Jr.
