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.
CLAUDETTE COLVINI became aware of how the world is and how the white establishment plays black people against each other.
More Claudette Colvin Quotes
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I was ostracized by my community.
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I’d like my grandchildren to be able to see that their grandmother stood up for something, a long time ago.
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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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There were many African Americans – many, many stories similar to my story.
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When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren’t even considered human.
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We were churchgoing people.
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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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That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.
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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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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.
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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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There was segregation everywhere. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn’t even go into the same restaurants.
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A lot has changed since I grew up, but there’s still a long way to go. I don’t think we can move forward with Donald Trump as the president. There’s a disconnect there. We don’t want to regress, we want progress.
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I sleep when the sleep comes down on me.
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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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