Samuel DeWitt Proctor

“It's ironic that at the time that school integration began, its enemies had no idea we would end up victims of our major achievement. Today, forty years later, all big-city school systems are largely black and failing; whites and middle class black have fled to the suburbs or private schools. Indeed, effective school integration today is a myth. Instead of attending warm and dynamic schools where they are sponsored and affirmed, black students today are educationally crippled, too often abandoned in urban, drug-infested, violent, crime-ridden holding pens and dealt with like cattle. Clearly, something radically new must occur to generate a fresh start in educating masses of urban black youth.”
― Samuel DeWitt Proctor, Substance of Things Hoped for: A Memoir of African-American Faith

“President Johnson raised our expectations to a peak when he pushed through the Civil Rights Bill that year. Automobile horns were blowing all over Washington that day as liberals, white and black, passed each other on the streets and highways, flashing peace signs as recognition. It wasn’t enough. Super-right-wing groups started dropping from trees and crawling from under rocks. Even Barry Goldwater could not control the extreme far-right. Whenever blacks progressed an inch, right-win extremists reacted as though it were a mile. When Howard Hughes died, a note was found among his memorabilia saying that enough had been done for blacks to last them for a hundred years”
― Samuel DeWitt Proctor, Substance of Things Hoped for: A Memoir of African-American Faith