You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.

Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.

All of us - who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries - were, instead, black victims of the white man's American social system.

The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to 400 years of the conscious racism of the American whites.

Its culture: the fruit of its life, the product of its own efforts in thought and art. This culture is not international. It is the expression of the national genius, of the blood. The culture is international in its brilliance but national in origin. Someone made a fine comparison: bread and wheat may be internationally consumed, but they always bear the imprint of the soil from which they came.

This isn't about hatred. This isn't about racism. We stand against a broken system that has failed all of us.