Ralph Abernathy

Not only are a voteless people a hopeless people. A non-producing people are hopeless also.

Bring on your tear gas, bring on your grenades, your new supplies of Mace, your state troopers and even your national guards. But let the record show we ain't going to be turned around.

I wanted to show that Martin Luther King was simply a human being, not a god, not a saint.

He told us he was going to take crime out of the streets. He did. He took it into the damn White House.

History will treat me right.

You may be assured that we won't ever let your words die. Like the words of our Master, Jesus Christ, they will live in our minds and our hearts and in the souls of black men and white men, brown men and yellow men as long as time shall last.

Christians should be ready for a change because Jesus was the greatest changer in history.

I will always be open to receive my friends. I will not force myself on them.

Everything I learned about the Great Depression was from a college textbook.

I am not going to say I have been a saint. I have not been a perfect man. None is perfect but the Father, which is in Heaven.

I have suffered as much as Martin Luther King. Only I didn't get the bullet. And I would have taken the bullet if I could have.

I loved Martin Luther King more than a brother.

I went to jail 44 times. I've been beaten and left for dead on the side of the road fighting for freedom... Yet Rosa Parks is better known in history than Ralph David Abernathy. Why is that?

In so many instances, there has been an attempt to rewrite history. And many times, on photographs, Martin and I were marching together, hand in hand; they cropped the photographs and left me out.

I don't know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future.