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American South Quotes

Browse 16 quotes about American South.

American South Quotes

“If the moderates of the white South fail to act now, history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people, Our generation will have to repent not only for the acts and words of the children of darkness but also for the fears and apathy of the children of light.”

AmericaJusticeSilenceSouthCivil RightsInactionWhitesAmerican SouthModerate Whites
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“But some of the machinery would be left, since new pieces could always be bought on the instalment plan - gaunt, staring motionless wheels rising from the mounds of brick rubble and ragged weeds with a quality profoundly astonishing, and gutted boilers lifting their rusting and unsmoking stacks with an air stubborn, baffled and bemused upon a stumppocked scene of profound and peaceful desolation, unplowed, untilled, gutting slowly into red and choked ravines beneath the long quiet rains of autumn and the galloping fury of vernal equinoxes.”

NatureBeautyDesolationAmerican SouthDeindustrialisation
Book:Light in August
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“When one-third of the population of the erstwhile Confederacy had consisted of the much-maligned Sons of Ham, the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation. The presence of the Negro as an under class had also made of Dixie a unique part of the United States. There, despite the trend to industrialization, life was a little different, a little pleasanter, a little softer. There was contrast and variety, which was rare in a nation where standardization had progressed to such an extent that a traveler didn't know what town he was in until someone informed him. The South had always been identified with the Negro, and vice versa, and its most pleasant memories treasured in song and story, were built around this pariah class. The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race pride and the studied arrogance of even the poorest half-starved white peon, were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses derived their only consolation and happiness from the fact that they were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than the mudsill blacks.”

AmericaClassRacismPrejudiceSouthAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesConfederacyAmerican South
Book:Black No More
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“Indigenous survival in the face of erasure speaks to our resilience, adaptability, and—when necessary—an obstinance that has survived three centuries of oppression. So the next time you read or hear in a land acknowledgment that "these are the ancestral lands of..." remember that we never left.”

Us HistoryColonizationNorth CarolinaNative AmericansAmerican South
Book:On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice
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“The overseas frontier—wars in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Haiti—acted as a prism, refracting the color line abroad back home. In each military occupation and prolonged counterinsurgency they fought, southerners could replay the dissonance of the Confederacy again and again. They could fight in the name of the loftiest ideals—liberty, valor, self-sacrifice, camaraderie—while putting down people of color.”

WarRaceConfederacyAmerican South
Book:The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
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“Ethan got some books out of an old trunk. They were history books, some passed down from his great-grandfather Tom through his grandfather Jeb and father Andrew. Ethan expected that he’d pass them on to his own child, one day. History and family trees had always been very important to the Fortner family.”

Great DepressionChildrens BooksGenealogyHistory Of The United StatesAmerican South
Book:The Adventures of the Home For Supper Kids
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“Never since the days of the Spartan Helots has history recorded such brutality as has been ever since the war and as is now being perpetrated upon the Negro in the South. How easy for us to go to Russia and drop a tear of sympathy over the persecuted Jew. But a step across Mason's and Dixon's line will bring us upon a scene of horrors before which those of Russia, bad as they are, pale into insignificance! No irresponsible, blood-thirsty mobs prowl over Russian territory, lashing and lynching its citizens.”

RussiaJewishLynchingAmerican SouthBlack AmericansMason DixonMob ViolenceSouthern Usa1892
Author:Lucy Parsons
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“Many members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive. Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants.”

RacismAfrican AmericansAmerican SouthCovert RacismSouthern AmericaAmerican NorthExodus From The South
Book:Letter to My Daughter
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“A significant role, in this tense period of transition, is assigned to the moderates of the white South. Unfortunately today, the leadership of the white South is by and large in the hands of close-minded extremists. These persons gain prominence and power by the dissemination of false ideas, and by appealing to the deepest fears and hates within the human mind. But they do not speak for the South; of that I am convinced. They speak only for a willful and vocal minority.”

AmericaHateRaceLiesSouthCivil RightsRace RelationsWhitesAmerican SouthWhite Moderates
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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