I wanted the young African-American girls also on the bus to know that they had a right to be there, because they had paid their fare just like the white passengers.
CLAUDETTE COLVINI’ve always told my children that once they go out into the world, they must have two heads and two minds: one to keep grounded, the other to deal with corporate America.
More Claudette Colvin Quotes
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There were many African Americans – many, many stories similar to my story.
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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.
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When you’ve been abused daily and you see people humiliated and harassed, you just get tired of it.
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We were churchgoing people.
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Rosa Parks wasn’t the first one to rebel against the segregated seats. I was the first one.
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I left the South in 1963 and was living in Morristown, New Jersey, when the March on Washington took place, so I watched it on television instead.
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New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama.
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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.
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I became aware of how the world is and how the white establishment plays black people against each other.
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Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn’t the case at all.
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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.
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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.
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That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.
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I was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.
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When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren’t even considered human.
CLAUDETTE COLVIN