To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.

It is a measure of the Negro's circumstance that, in America, the smallest things usually take him so very long, and that, by the time he wins them, they are no longer little things: they are miracles.

Only in the case of the Negro has the melting pot failed to bring a minority into the full stream of American life.

We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

The black man continues on his way. He plods wearily no longer-he is striding freedom road with the knowledge that if he hasn't got the world in a jug, at least he has the stopper in his hand.