[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2025\/06\/19\/civil-rights-quotes-juneteenth-2025\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2025\/06\/19\/civil-rights-quotes-juneteenth-2025\/","headline":"“Your silence will not protect you”: Civil rights quotes for Juneteenth 2025","name":"“Your silence will not protect you”: Civil rights quotes for Juneteenth 2025","description":"Civil rights leaders have oft used their voices as a force for good. Today, on Juneteenth 2025, we recognize some of those words \u2013 while also recognizing that the battle for human rights is ongoing.","datePublished":"2025-06-19","dateModified":"2025-06-19","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/jenn-vande-zande\/#Person","name":"Jenn Vande Zande","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/jenn-vande-zande\/","identifier":229,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ef76ed873963201b65acc65a3cb353caa294225a4e9a8427f011077842dd955c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ef76ed873963201b65acc65a3cb353caa294225a4e9a8427f011077842dd955c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Future of Commerce","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","width":172,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/juneteenth-civil-rights_FTR1.jpg","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/juneteenth-civil-rights_FTR1.jpg","height":375,"width":1200},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2025\/06\/19\/civil-rights-quotes-juneteenth-2025\/","about":[{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/purpose\/diversity\/","name":"Diversity and Inclusion","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/purpose\/","name":"Purpose","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Purpose"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/purpose\/purpose-general\/","name":"Purpose","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Purpose"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/purpose\/thought-leadership\/","name":"Thought Leadership","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thought_leader"]}],"wordCount":877,"articleBody":"Throughout the course of human history, many social movements and revolutions share a common tool: The power of words. From the oldest of decrees known all the way to this very moment in which we find ourselves, language has proven time and again to be a powerful ally of those hoping to shape history for the better \u2013 as well as a powerful weapon for those who strive toward an opposite goal.Civil rights leaders have oft used their voices as a force for good. Today, on Juneteenth 2025, we recognize some of those words \u2013 while also recognizing that the battle for human rights is ongoing.Civil rights quotes for Juneteenth 2025\u201cA democracy cannot thrive where power remains unchecked and justice is reserved for a select few. Ignoring these cries and failing to respond to this movement is simply not an option \u2014 for peace cannot exist where justice is not served.\u201d \u2014 John Lewis“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” \u2013 Audre Lorde“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.\u201d \u2013 Martin Luther King Jr.“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” \u2013 Ida B. Wells\u201cHistory isn\u2019t something you look back at and say it was inevitable. It happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.\u201d \u2013 Marsha P. Johnson\u201cI imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.\u201d \u2013 James Baldwin“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”\u2013 Martin Luther King Jr.“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”\u2013 Nelson Mandela“The very serious function of racism\u2026is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn\u2019t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary.\u201d \u2014 Toni Morrison“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” \u2013 Malcolm X“Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-sense.” \u2013 W.E.B. Du Bois“If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.” \u2013 Harriet Tubman\u201cI learned that racism, like most systems of oppression, isn\u2019t about bad people doing terrible things to people who are different from them but instead is a way of maintaining power for certain groups at the expense of others.\u201d \u2015 Alicia Garza“Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse, and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper”. \u2013 Martin Luther King Jr.\u201cWe have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’d ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.\u201d \u2015 Sojourner Truth“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” \u2013 Frederick Douglass“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”\u2013 Audre Lorde“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” \u2013 Malcolm X“Each and every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. I want to encourage each and everyone of us to interrogate how we might be an oppressor and how we might be able to become liberators for ourselves and for each other.”\u00a0 \u2013 Laverne Cox\u201cIt is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.\u201d \u2013 James Baldwin“Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”\u2013 John Lewis“Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.” \u2013 Coretta Scott King“I, too, sing America.I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh,And eat well,And grow strong.Tomorrow,I\u2019ll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody\u2019ll dare Say to me, \u201cEat in the kitchen,\u201dThen.Besides,They\u2019ll see how beautiful I amAnd be ashamed\u2014I, too, am America.”\u2013 Langston Hughes"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"2025","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2025\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"06","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2025\/\/06\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"19","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2025\/\/06\/\/19\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"“Your silence will not protect you”: Civil rights quotes for Juneteenth 2025","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2025\/06\/19\/civil-rights-quotes-juneteenth-2025\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]