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Civil rights are more important today than they ever have been in our country. There is so much divisiveness today.

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.

There has been far too much hypocrisy in the field of civil rights. It is easy enough to give rousing speeches or call for legislation which has no possibility of passage.

In reality, civil rights are more important than national rights. They're the content, the day-to-day: work, life. But people are sensitive to national rights.

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.

Rejecting the fundamental provision of the Civil Rights Act is a rejection of the foundational promise of America that all men and women should be treated equally, a promise for which many Americans have lost their lives.

Many civil rights came about, not when they were passed into law, but because the federal government did what it should and saw them enforced.

Civil rights is unfinished business. Make it your business.

In 1962, the smallest things were upsetting to authority. It wasn't the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't the Anti-war Movement. It was something else, but it was a harbinger of what was to come.

Civil rights was not an impossible dream. Thousands of brave African Americans stepped forward to make it happen.