“There was segregation everywhere. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn’t even go into the same restaurants.”

That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.

As long as white people put people of color, African Americans and Latinos, in the same dispensable bag, and look at our children of color as insignificant and treat women of color as not as deserving of protection as white women, we will never achieve true equality.

When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren’t even considered human.

A lot of African American women wanted to emulate white women. But I said in my mind, rationally thinking, there is no way you are going to get your hair that straight, especially in the summer.

When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack.

I was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.

There were many African Americans – many, many stories similar to my story.

I lost most of my friends. Their parents had told them to stay away from me, because they said I was crazy, I was an extremist.

The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking. So did the teachers, too. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn’t like themselves.

Being dragged off that bus was worth it just to see Barack Obama become president, because so many others gave their lives and didn’t get to see it, and I thank God for letting me see it.

When you’ve been abused daily and you see people humiliated and harassed, you just get tired of it.

New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama.

I’d like my grandchildren to be able to see that their grandmother stood up for something, a long time ago.

Rosa Parks wasn’t the first one to rebel against the segregated seats. I was the first one.

We were churchgoing people.

I sleep when the sleep comes down on me.

I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor – anybody can do that – but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.

The seed of revolution is repression.

Black culture is cool, but black issues sure aren’t, huh?

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

I don’t want to be nice. Nice girls can only get what they’re offered.

I’m tired of having to consult a group of old white guys about my black girl craft. They don’t even know what they’re listening for or to.

This white woman came up to me, and I’m thinking, WOW. When I was a kid, she would have been robbed and raped and left for dead. This is a real strange scenario, and I just wanted to cry. I’m like, “Who am I? Where’s my heritage?

The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man’s pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another.