RACE RELATIONS
“When freed [the Negro] is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
“I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal.… We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“[T]here is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogism as this?”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. It is better for us both to be separated.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN, addressing a group of African American leaders at the White House, 1862
“I give… the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last, stand by the law of the state, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“This is a country for white men. And by God as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.”
—ANDREW JOHNSON
“If whites and blacks can’t get along together arrangements must be made to colonize the blacks.”
—ANDREW JOHNSON
“Slavery exists. It is black in the South, and white in the North.”
—ANDREW JOHNSON
“Segregation is not a humiliation, but a benefit.”
—WOODROW WILSON
“Men of both races may well stand uncompromisingly against any suggestion of social equality. This is not a question of social equality, but a question of recognizing a fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference. Racial amalgamation there cannot be.”
—WARREN HARDING
“America must be kept American. Biological laws show us that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.”
—CALVIN COOLIDGE
“I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a nigger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, Yellow men in Asia and White men in Europe and America.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
“If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.”
—RICHARD NIXON
“I hope I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-racism. This is what drives me.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
“I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed.”
—DONALD TRUMP, in an interview with Politico