Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind. James Meredith Read Quote
Nothing has been more detrimental to me than to be considered a symbol, because I never stood for any of that… The civil rights movement thought they would do me harm over the years by disassociating themselves from me. Well, nothing in the world was more to my advantage. I was never one of them… I had my own divine mission. James Meredith Read Quote
I chose as my target the University of Mississippi, which in 1960 was the holiest temple of white supremacy in America, next to the U.S. Capitol and the White House, both of which were under the control of segregationists and their collaborators. James Meredith Read Quote
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. James Meredith Read Quote
I considered myself engaged in a war from Day One. And my objective was to force the federal government – the Kennedy administration at that time – into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen. James Meredith Read Quote
Blacks were too scared to do anything, but they came out to greet James Meredith’: That would have been the story in the evening news if I hadn’t gotten myself shot. I got shot, and that allowed the movement protest thing to take over then and do their thing. James Meredith Read Quote
Do you know how big of an insult that is to me – to say that I had to be brave to confront some ignorant white folks? James Meredith Read Quote
It is an insult for me to have been alive through the times you are calling the so-called civil rights movement. I don’t celebrate my humiliations and my insults. James Meredith Read Quote
What I did at Ole Miss had nothing to do with going to classes. My objective was to destroy the system of white supremacy. James Meredith Read Quote
