30 Quotes from James Forman, Jr, Son of the Civil Rights Leader

The Fruit Didn’t Fall Far from the Tree

Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

James Forman Sr. may be lesser known than those he worked alongside in the civil rights movement. Forman was a student when he began working with Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and fellow students Stokely Carmichael and Diane Nash. The students often pushed their elders to take more dramatic action and led the way in the Freedom Rides and many sit-in protests.

Forman’s son, James Forman, Jr., also took up the mantle of civil rights. He’s published several books, including Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, which won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Junior is a renowned legal scholar and law professor at Yale Law School. Here are thirty quotes from Forman, some of which you’ve heard before, even if you don’t know the man.

1. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
2. “We cannot afford to be passive bystanders in the face of injustice. We must actively engage, challenge, and disrupt oppressive systems.”
3. “Change does not come from above; it comes from below. It comes from the people, from those most directly affected by the injustices of the system.”
4. “Community organizing is both a science and an art —…