Mary Church Terrell on Rights and Justice

‘As a nation we professed long ago to have abandoned the principle that might makes right. Before the world we pose today as a government whose citizens have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, in spite of these lofty professions and noble sentiments, the present policy of the government is to hold one-half of its citizens in legal subjection to the other, without being able to assign good and sufficient reasons for such a flagrant violation of the very principles upon which it was founded.‘
― Mary Church Terrell