The Sword and the Shield Quotes

“Travel broadens one’s scope,” he explained. “Anytime you do any traveling, your scope will be broadened. It doesn’t mean you change, you broaden.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“I believe that. It is easy to be bleak about the human race, but there are people who have proved to me that we can be better than we are.”19”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“Yet he personally vowed to more carefully expend his political energies. “I don’t want to be a fireman anymore,” he told SCLC staff. He promised to stop trying to extinguish racial fires created by Jim Crow, though he still planned to fan political flames at a time and place of his choosing.54”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“shared witness against injustice could marshal triumphs that wars never could.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“Malcolm inspired Blacks to unapologetically love themselves. He set a fearless example in this regard, offering his story of individual triumph against racism and poverty as a chance at collective redemption for the entire Black community.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“I hate to discuss violence, but realism impels me to admit that if this bill is not passed in strength, it will be harder to keep the struggle disciplined,” King”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“He envisioned protests that were less aimed at hearts and minds than based on power that could be leveraged with organized, disciplined, nonviolent political soldiers.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“A genuinely seismic event in American history, the Birmingham protests cleaved the nation in two, forcing citizens of all backgrounds to take honest measure of the intersection between race and democracy in national life.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“In many ways, racial segregation in America has worsened since King’s death. National progress has been stalled, indeed reversed, by local, state, and federal policies—from gentrification and zoning laws to tax codes”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.