Quotes

[on the impact of 'The March'] It changed the course of our lives. It gave us not only an internal sense of what we believed in being validated, but it gave us the sense of the community of commitment that was to change America. Not only in terms of African Americans, but to be able to say that ordinary human beings can gather together in large numbers, and if they gather together with heart and strength, they can change the course of history.

[on 'The March on Washington', August 29, 1963] We sang 'If I Had a Hammer'. They knew it and they sang. And the moment was created not by the three of us in a performance but by a quarter of a million people, gathering together and singing with us and saying, This moment belongs to us together. That's what singing together can do...'Joyful' doesn't really describe it for me. It was like the physicalization of love. It was ecstatic perhaps, but it was not giddy and silly or 'let's have a good time'. It was a far deeper kind of joy. It went beyond joy. It was hard to describe, but it was the antithesis of fear, and it propelled us all into another channel in our lives.