“The spirit of Gandhian agape that hung like a halo over Selma, with its nuns and angelic-faced students, was gone, replaced by a clenched militancy fueled by a despair expressed by Martin King's admission that his dream of Washington 1963 has turned into a nightmare.”
“My point is to highlight why current nostalgia for the organic community black Americans supposedly lost with the success of the civil rights movement is so frighteningly shortsighted and dangerous”
“The perception among many civil rights activists is that their issues took a back seat during Giuliani’s tenure. Civil rights are simply not part of this crimebuster’s image”
“The Movement in Amite County is pure and religious, uncontaminated by organizational in-fighting and hyper-militancy. It is just two solitary organizers and a handful of local Negroes.”
“There were rabbis, junkies, schoolboys, actors, sharecroppers, intellectuals, maids, novelists, folk-singers, and politicians — 40,000 motives and 40,0000 people marching to Montgomery”
“Just look at all the T-shirts, the buttons, the photographs, the records, the film and video appearances. Malcolm is today's black hero, a black ideal for turbulent times: the steely mirror image we want ourselves to see.”
“I remember the picture: Two black men in bloody tattered clothing hang from a tree and below them stand the grinning gloating proud and pleased white folks. But there’d been a third man lynched in Marion that night — and he’d survived.”
