James Meredith Quotes

Do you know what the words "African American" really imply? That the person doesn't have the natural right to be there, so that whatever right they have has to be given to them. John Kennedy's daddy spent his whole life and a whole lot of money trying to keep from becoming (called) half Native American. For blacks to get control of the set-asides, the black elite deliberately set up this African American thing. Jesse Jackson called a meeting a long time ago of elite blacks, determined to use this term. The majority of blacks hated this term with a passion, but the media is pushing it down their throats.

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.

my real focus is on producing citizens without any identification. Don't call me African American; I am a citizen of the United States of America. That's the designation that I want everybody to reach.

White supremacy is worldwide; the whole war against Hitler was about white supremacy. It's not just an issue in America. I found out last time I was in Europe. I went to Eastern Europe; that's when I found out that white supremacy is just as powerful there as the worst days in Mississippi.

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.

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

I think the future of the United States of America will be determined by two groups of people: well-to-do white women over 70, and professional or well-to-do white males under 40. What most people don't know is that it was the rich white females that defeated the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment).

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

Now I'm going to use all my energy to do what I think God sent me here to do. ("What is that?") To make the Christian world, particularly, know what the biblical and Jesus' own command is for them to do for the poor. And the only thing I'm connecting myself to with this debate at Oxford is this March Against AIDS. Not because it's that, but the AIDS problem is what it is because of the condition of the poor, and the responsibility (the rich shirk) to give to the poor. When they give anything, they think it's a gift. You understand? But that absolutely ain't the way Christ meant it. It was an absolute responsibility. That's the message God called me to deliver; and that's what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. To tell you the truth, the last 10, 15 years, I've spent trying to figure out why in the world God let me stay in (my life).

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

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.

There's a fourth (branch of government): the media, which is a thousand times more powerful than all the others put together. You see, you all are always blaming the Klan, the Ku Klux Klan. They ain't the ones making the policy; (the Klan) do what other powers allow them to do. Dealing with the black/white issue in America, that's been the Southern Baptists, and the most powerful are the Mississippi Southern Baptists. All other states have deferred to Mississippi and follow their lead on what policies can be agreed to. ... [Y]ou hear people talking about the "Bubba faction." The white, poor working class faction: That exists because the media, for 40 years, went on a program of making all whites feel like they were descended from the slave-holding class. There was nothing further from truth ... (White supremacy) wasn't about the (poor white) people who were always blamed; it was the powers-that-be.