I will die standing up for the freedom of my people. Martin Luther King
The world now demands the maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit and we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventures in Vietnam that we have been detrimental to the lives of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn softly from our present ways. The New Testament says, Repent. It is time for America to repent now. For the Kingdom of God is at hand. Martin Luther King
And don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be some policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems as if I can hear God saying to America, You’re too arrogant. If you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power. And I’ll place it into the hands of a nation that don’t even know my name. Martin Luther King
We are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. Surely this madness must cease. We must stop now. Martin Luther King
If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? Martin Luther King
‘Well I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountain top. And I don’t mind. Like anybody I would like to live a long life, longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He has allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’ Martin Luther King, cited LK: The Assassination Tapes, BBC 2013
If you’re born in America with a black skin, you’re born in prison. Malcolm X, interview June 1963
We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. Malcolm X, 1965
You and I have never seen democracy – all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream. We’ve experienced only the American nightmare. Malcolm X
We declare our right on this Earth to be a man. To be a human being. To be respected as a human being. To be given the rights of a human being. In this society, on this Earth this day which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. Malcolm X
When I was in Britain I used to think about America every day. I’m American. I wanted people here to see. I also wanted to see whether we could make it back here. Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child
The Sixties at the time was sort of not an advertising concept. It was not a set of pop-music hits. It was a period of near revolutionary change in the American life. In the American Psyche. In American relations between and among people and races and the rest. David Remnick, Muhammad Ali biographer
America is a nation created by all the hopeful wanderers of Europe, not out of geography and genetics, but out of purpose. Theodore H White, The Making of the President 1960
Johnson’s instinct for power is as primordial as a salmon’s going upstream to spawn. ibid.
The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy. Theodore H White, Time 19th November 1984
Renewed hostile actions against United States’ ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply. Lyndon Baines Johnson
I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best coloured man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he’ll empty his pockets for you. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1960
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law. Lyndon Baines Johnson, Congress 27th November 1963
We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves. Lyndon Baines Johnson, speech 21st October 1964
There will be some nervous nellies. And some who will become frustrated and bothered and break ranks under the strain. And some who turn on the leaders and on their country and on our own fighting men. Lyndon Baines Johnson
I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election ... It adds up to a preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States. George W Malone, Congress 1957
See, the greatest sports title mean nothing, mister, if you cannot be free, see. Boys in Vietnam are throwing away, you may say, their lives. I haven’t did that much. They are dying today to free somebody they don’t know. I’m still living. So what in the hell is a heavyweight title and a few sneaker dollar bills for my people’s freedom? Muhammad Ali, television Interview
Why should me and so-called Negroes go ten thousand miles away from home and America to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent brown people who has never bothered us? And I will say directly, No, I will not go. Muhammad Ali
In April and May of 1963 you have the single most important urban mobilisation in the desegregation struggle of the South – and that’s in Birmingham. King is jailed. Thousands are jailed. In September 1963 you have the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing ... The month before you have the March on Washington DC. Two hundred and fifty thousand Americans black and white demonstrating – pressing the Kennedy administration to push Congress to adopt national Civil Rights legislation. In November 1963 you have the assassination of President Kennedy ... That was the context in which the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight occurred. Manning Marable
Their policy depends on deception and secrecy like every imperial policy in history. Even dictatorships have taken great efforts always to disguise what they are doing and why they are doing it to their own people. Daniel Ellsberg, author Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam & The Pentagon Papers
Under Bush a military coup had taken place in the United States giving the Pentagon unprecedented powers. Daniel Ellsberg
9The courage we need is not the courage, the fortitude, to be obedient in the service of an unjust war, to help conceal lies, to do our job by a boss who has usurped power and is acting as an outlaw government, it is the courage at last to face honestly the truth and reality of what we are doing in the world, and act responsibly to change it. Daniel Ellsberg
A Federal Grand Jury in Detroit today charged the thirteen top leaders of the Weathermen with plotting to bomb public buildings in Chicago, Detroit, New York and Berkeley California. The Weathermen are the militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society. Green & Siegel, The Weather Underground 2002, news broadcast, 2002
Hello, I’m going to read a declaration of a state of war. ibid. Bernardine Dohrn
Revolution is touching all of our lives. Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks. ibid.
There’s no way to be committed to non-violence in the middle of the most violent society that history has ever created. ibid.
Our country was murdering millions of people. ibid. Mark Rudd
The marches on Washington were up to 5,000,000/1,000,000. ibid. Brian Flanaghan
This nation is in a state of turmoil perhaps unparalleled in our history. Poverty amidst wealth, widespread racism, and bewilderment over a strange war, are the seeds of the revolution. ibid. news report
We were entering an incredible period of revolution. ibid. Naomi Jaffe