‘With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue to assume, we look forward to a future larger with promise and hope. Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.‘― Mary Church Terrell

‘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

‘The colored woman feels that woman’s cause is one and universal; and that not till the image of God, whether in parian (white marble) or ebony, is sacred and inviolable; not till race, color, sex, and condition are seen as the accidents, and not the substance of life; not till the universal title of humanity, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is conceded to be inalienable to all; not till then is woman’s lesson taught and woman’s cause won – not the white woman’s, nor the black woman’s, not the red woman’s, but the cause of every man and of…

‘The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.‘― Anna Julia Haywood Cooper