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Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

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Ty Seidule

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“So if black power means black armies racing through the streets, creating havoc, that certainly does nothing to advance the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the black community. Just the opposite, in fact....If they think a few Molotov cocktails are going to bring down the whole system and build something new, I'm afraid they're just indulging in wishful-thinking,”

PoliticsViolenceRiotingHumanrightsBlackpeopleViolentprotests
Book:Truman Capote: Conversations
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“One effect of the civil rights struggle in the past ten years has been to convince a generation of young Negroes that their place in society is no longer predetermined at birth. We demonstrated that segregationist barriers could be toppled, that social relations were not fixed for all time, that change was on the agenda. The federal government reinforced this new consciousness with its many pronouncements that racial integration and equality were the official goals of American society. The reactionaries would tell us that these hopes and promises were unreasonable to begin with and should never have been advanced. They equate stability with the preservation of the established hierarchy of social relations, and chaos with the reform of that unjust arrangement. The fact is that the promises were reasonable, justified, and long overdue. Our task is not to rescind them--how do you rescind the promise of equality?--but to implement them fully and vigorously. This task is enormously complicated by the polarization now taking place on the race issue. We are caught in a vicious cycle: inaction on the poverty and civil rights fronts foments rioting in the ghettos; the rioting encourages vindictive inaction. Militancy, extremism, and violence grow in the black community; racism, reaction, and conservatism gain ground in the white community.”

RaceRacismCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksEqual RightsRace RelationsRiotsRioting
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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