One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the South today, you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When you live in the South, you're constantly part of the civil rights movement.
I travel all the time, but when I come back to the South, I see such progress. In a real sense, a great deal of the South has been redeemed. People feel freer, more complete, more whole, because of what happened in the movement.
While I've said that there are plenty of things I dislike about the South, I can be clear that there are things I love about the South.
I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and I have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.
I have a big passion about civil rights for everyone - whoever is being downtrodden at the moment, it doesn't matter: racial discrimination or sexual orientation or gender. Whatever it is, I'm there. I think I was a born civil rights activist. I can't stand the smashing of a community. It's not fair and it's not right.
You know, bigotry isn't relevant to just the South. It never was. But I'm very grateful that I don't know what it's like from experience.
Well, I've been politically involved for a really long time. Growing up in the segregated South, it was a very painful experience for me to live through the open racism of the time.
I think that the thing that we learned back in the day of the civil rights movement is that you do have to keep on keeping on.
Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!
You grow up with a heightened sense of the Civil Rights Movement, but I think it wasn't until I became of age that I really had a great appreciation for the struggle that took place.