Dennis Chavez Quotes

The main point is that fair-employment practices should be adopted in this country. What with fair-employment practices? We love to talk about liberality and about saving the world. We sent our boys to Europe, to China, and to the Pacific. The only decoration which thousands of them received was a white cross surmounting a grave.

Hitler believed in discrimination. We know what happened. He carried it to its finality. He believed in a superior race. He believed in a superior people and the power of might and dictatorship. I believe in the law. I prefer due process of law to paying tribute to any individual in this country.

The translation into law of the new concepts of religious and economic liberty was not easily achieved any more than the enactment of fair-employment legislation will be easily won. Rigid religious conformity was woven into the law of some of the separate colonies, and rebellious sects were driven forth to found new colonies where religious freedom could flourish. At one point, Catholics and Jews were not allowed to vote. For many years people without property were denied the franchise. But the ideal of freedom was not to be downed, and when the crisis which precipitated the American Revolution came about

Every great crisis in American history has thus far had the moral result of increased protection and increased liberty for the individual. This country's first great crisis-the American Revolution-gave us political and religious independence. The crisis which was the Civil War gave us freedom from bondage for all menand women. Out of the crisis of the First World War came women's suffrage. Out of this World War II, with all its terrifying implications, comes: What?

The implications of discrimination, however, are not always so well known or understood. That an American citizen of Mexican descent in Arizona or Colorado may not occupy public office is a national disgrace.

of all the issues confronting our country today, the issue of racial and religious discrimination is at once the most neglected and the most critical. There is no victory over Hitler and Tojo which by itself will erase the injustice of economic discrimination practiced against the minority groups among our people. Full employment without fair employment means the fastening of religious and racial minorities to the bottom rung of the economic ladder regardless of their education, abilities, and skills. Unemployment compensation will not break down the barrier of prejudice. There is nothing in the so-called GI bill of rights which will protect the returning two millions of minority veterans from the pattern of job discrimination which exists in this country. We in this nation stand at a crossroads in history. Either we will take the road which will lead us past another goalpost of human progress or we will be forced into the path riddled with the pitfalls of human hatreds which led Europe into World War II. We shall not be permitted to stand still. Whichever road we take will be for you, the people, to choose.

Most speakers try to be as circumspect as possible when handling a subject as delicate as racial discrimination. But the world situation today is so critical, the fate of western civilization is so precarious, and the future of our nation as a great power is so imperiled that we find circumspection out of order; it is time to speak out boldly let the chips fall where they may. Discrimination endangers our country, and a threat to our national safety is a matter which vitally concerns us all, and it behooves us as good citizens to study and understand the problem. And if we find that racial discrimination presents such a threat to our safety, then we should immediately, with every ounce of resolution and determination at our command, seek to eradicate it from our way of life.

Mr President, what about those promises? Were they supposed to be made but not to be kept