James Meredith Quotes

My statue at Ole Miss is a false idol. And it wasn't put there for my benefit. It was put there for Ole Miss and Mississippi...Ole Miss kicked my butt and they're still celebrating. Because every black that's gone there since me has been insulted, humiliated, and they can't even tell their story. Everybody has to tell James Meredith's story — which is a lie. The powers that be in Mississippi understand this very clearly. See, I've been telling them for fifty years how insulting it is to me to suggest that I had to be courageous to confront some ignorant white folks. And recently, they told me they really understand, but they're gonna keep doing it. I can't figure a way to make 'em stop. They're gonna keep on doin' it because it makes it impossible for the blacks there now to say anything about what's happened to them. Because the comparison is with the idol.

What we need is to shift the focus from race and color to rich and poor.

Democracy has some good points, but it ain't hardly what most Americans think it is.

I've always bragged about getting my principles from my father, but it was my momma who showed me how.

Understand: The greatest supporters of white supremacy are blacks who have "made it." They are the last people who want substantial change because they don't know where they will fit after change. You understand? But that's secondary. The main issue in America today is the whites who lived all their life on this promise of getting something better than nonwhites, are now being cut off, they think.

there are nine people who control the Southern Baptists, who control America, and America controls the world. I don't know how many people control the media, but there aren't a whole lot more than that.

There's nothing more powerful than someone that everyone can say is crazy, but everybody knows they're are not. Fear is a two-way street, Most people only think it's a one-way street. Nothing is more powerful than a person being in a situation where everyone thinks they ought to be fearful, and they do not show any fear. What that situation does is scare the life out of everybody else. Know it's a fact: When (then-Lt. Gov.) Paul Johnson stopped us in the middle of the street (in 1962) ... he was shaking so bad that he couldn't hold his hand straight. Back then, the football players that couldn't make it to the pros got automatic positions on the state police. So you had all those 300-pound state troopers backing up against the wall, and every one of them was shaking like a leaf on a tree.

The big fight among evangelicals is whether you interpret the Bible through metaphors or you literally believe that what is said in the Bible: that the rich should help the poor. It literally says in the Bible that the rich should help the poor, that farmers could not harvest all the crops.

My great-grandfather was the last ruler of the Choctaw Nation...When I was growing up, we saw ourselves as Native Americans. I was really shielded. I knew literally nothing about blacks. The first time I was called "nigger" to my face was the first day I went to Ole Miss...Everybody else was dealing with the black-white war. Tell you the truth, I was still fighting the European-Indian war.

What any human being can do in life depends upon the foundation laid between birth and age five.

("Isn't it easy to take a stance on fighting AIDS?") No, it's not easy. ... The media has decided they are not going to deal with AIDS in America.

Bear Bryant had a quota of five blacks on his team. In NFL, until 15 or 20 years ago, everyone said a black couldn't be quarterback. Now if he can win, he can be the quarterback. It's not an issue any more. Even Tiger Woods: When he first came on scene it was an issue. Today nobody anywhere in the world wants to have a golf tournament if Tiger Woods ain't on the team.

I think Ole Miss is the most progressive of any major school in the nation when it comes to race issues...For the first 35 years after I went there, you would have found nothing at Ole Miss that made you know that James Meredith had ever been there. Almost since the time of present administration (Chancellor Robert Khayat), they made what I am sure, although they never told me, was a conscious decision to change. I think the decision was to educate Mississippians, not to keep the nation off their back, but they genuinely went out looking for blacks to educate. For the first 35 years, you couldn't have read nothing (done by Ole Miss) to know I was there.

What I did at Ole Miss had nothing to do with going to classes. My objective was to destroy the system of white supremacy.

Western civilization has worked like this: They marched in armor and took over. Almost all of the wealth comes from developing land. England never paid a dime for a single acre. But now there's no more land to take. They've tried in space for fifty years and they haven't found no place out there. So we're gonna have to learn to do what the Native Americans knew how to do: live the good life on the land that's there.