“People I represent, to the extent of the opportunities which they have had, and considering how recently they have escaped from the oppression and wrongs committed upon them, are just as virtuous and hold just as many high characteristics as any class in the country.”
1873, Speech on Civil Rights Act (1873)
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Joseph Hayne Rainey 14
politician 1832–1887Related quotes

Actually from State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, paraphrasing Marx in The Civil War in France.
Misattributed

Source: (1917), Ch. 5 [Lenin, Vladmir Illych, The State and Revolution, 1917, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm, Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!]

1850s, West India Emancipation (1857)
Context: Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. [... ] Men might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Late Night with Seth Meyers (2 June 2015) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFAq-4Vv5c0
2010s, 2015

in an interview on ABC
1965