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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.

Civil rights is unfinished business. Make it your business.

When you live in the South, you're constantly part of the civil rights movement.

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

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.

I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience.

The civil rights movement in the United States was about the same thing, about equality of treatment for all sections of the people, and that is precisely what our movement was about.

I am not a civil rights leader, and I don't profess to be one.

I think young people don't really know that much about the Civil Rights Movement and about the history of African Americans in this country. It's not taught enough in school.