“You have the choice to be governed by those who aim to keep us segregated in racial compartments so they can continue to enjoy their privileged status in society, at your expense.”

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Source: The Beauty Myth

Book IV, 4.17-[4]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book IV

1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)
Context: And now it is time for us to move on to that great and noble realm of justice and brotherhood. That is the great struggle taking place in our nation today. It isn’t a struggle just based on a lot of noise; it is a struggle to save the soul of our nation for no nation can rise to its full moral maturity so long as it subjects a segment of its citizenry on the basis of race or color. And somehow we must come to see more than ever before that racial injustice is a cancer in the body politic which must be removed before our moral health can be realized. Racial segregation must be seen for what it is — and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity. [... ] Segregation is evil because it relegates persons to the status of things. [... ] And segregation is evil because it stigmatizes the segregated as an untouchable in a caste system. We’ve been in the mountain of segregation long enough and it is time for all men of goodwill to say now, “We are through with segregation now, henceforth, and forever more.”

Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, Paris, (16 January 1787)
1780s

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)
Context: We do have challenges with racial bias -- in our communities, in our criminal justice system, in our society -- the legacy of slavery and segregation. But the fact that we have open debates within America’s own democracy is what allows us to get better. In 1959, the year that my father moved to America, it was illegal for him to marry my mother, who was white, in many American states. When I first started school, we were still struggling to desegregate schools across the American South. But people organized; they protested; they debated these issues; they challenged government officials. And because of those protests, and because of those debates, and because of popular mobilization, I’m able to stand here today as an African-American and as President of the United States. That was because of the freedoms that were afforded in the United States that we were able to bring about change.

&quot;Letter to the Editor&quot; The Times (22 July 1920) http://www.telstudies.org/writings/letters/1919-20/200722_the_times.shtml <br class="br">Context: Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no qualification for freedom. Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitans have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour&#x27;s occupying you is greater than the profit.

Commenting on the NATO bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb forces, during an interview for the Death of Yugoslavia documentary, 1995 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW4KU4FQ8qo <br class="br">1990s