Fifteen voices that have mattered through out history.

1. Voice Matters:
It Always Has and It Always Will

2. “The only real prison is fear, and the only
real freedom is freedom from fear.”
Aung San Suu Kyi is a
Burmese opposition
politician and chairperson of
the National League for
Democracy. In 1991, Aung
received the Nobel Prize for
Peace.

3. “The proof that one truly believes is in action.”
A strategist and activist, Bayard
Rustin is best remembered as
the organizer of the 1963 March
on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom, one of the largest
nonviolent protests in the United
States.

4. “They who can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety.”
Author, politician and inventor
Benjamin Franklin was one of
the Founding Fathers of the
United States. A prominent figure
in the American
Enlightenment, Franklin assisted
in drafting the Declaration of
Independence and the
Constitution.

5. “There is no such thing as separate but equal.”
Known as “the man who killed
Jim Crow,” lawyer Charles
Hamilton Houston played a
role in nearly every Civil Rights
case that went before the
Supreme Court in the first half
of the 20th century.

6. “I’m not concerned with your liking or
disliking me...All I ask is that you respect
me as a human being.”
Jackie Robinson was the
first African American to play
major league baseball when
the Brooklyn Dodgers started
him at first base on April
15, 1947.

7. “Not everything that is faced can be
changed. But nothing can be changed
until it is faced.”
Civil Rights activist and
writer James Baldwin is
regarded as a highly
insightful, iconic writer with
works like The Fire Next
Time and Another Country.

8. “If not us, then who?
If not now, then when?”
Freedom Rider John Lewis
spoke at 1963's March on
Washington and led the
demonstration that became
known as "Bloody Sunday." He
was elected to Congress in
1986 and received the
Presidential Medal of Freedom
in 2011.

9. “You may have to fight a battle
more than once to win it.”
Margaret Thatcher became
the first woman to lead a
major Western democracy,
winning three successive
General Elections and serving
as British Prime Minister for
more than 11 years (19791990).

10. “When you stop having dreams and ideals –
well, you might as well stop altogether.”
Deemed one of the finest
contraltos of her time, in 1955
Marian Anderson became the
first African American to
perform with the New York
Metropolitan Opera.

11. “Our lives begin to end the day we
become silent about things that matter.”
Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. led the
Civil Rights Movement in
the United States from the
mid-1950s until his
assassination in 1968.

12. “If we lose love and self respect for each
other, this is how we finally die.”
Civil Rights activist, author
and poet Maya Angelou, is
an award-winning writer best
known for her autobiography I
Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings.

13. “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Seamstress and Civil Rights
activist Rosa Parks refused
to surrender her bus seat to
a white passenger, spurring
the Montgomery Bus
Boycott and the Civil Rights
Movement.

14. “An army of principles can penetrate
where an army of soldiers cannot.”
Thomas Paine was an English
American writer and pamphleteer
whose Common Sense and other
writings influenced the American
Revolution, and helped pave the
way for the Declaration of
Independence.

15. “Make a difference about something
other than yourselves.”
Toni Morrison was the first African
American woman to receive a
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998
and was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2012. Among
her best known novels are The
Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and
Beloved.

16. “An invasion of armies may be
resisted, but not an idea whose time has
come.”
Victor Hugo is a French
Romantic author best
known for his poetry and
his novels, including Les
Misérables.

17. Work Cited
Biographies available at: Biography.com

18. To learn more about McKinney & Associates, visit www.mckpr.com
McKinney & Associates was founded in 1990 with a commitment to
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beginning, McKinney has passionately and skillfully practiced public
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organizations.
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