When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack.
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’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.
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I never swore when I was young.
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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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For African-Americans, it’s still going to be – some people say double hard – I’d say four times as hard. Be an opportunist. Take advantage of your resources, because the only way to win is with education, self-esteem, having value in yourself.
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I was ostracized by my community.
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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 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 became aware of how the world is and how the white establishment plays black people against each other.
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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 wanted to be an attorney. My mother would say I never stopped talking. I always had a lot of questions to ask, and I was never satisfied with the answer. A lot of things I wasn’t satisfied by.
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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.
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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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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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I always tell young people to hold on to their dreams. And sometimes you have to stand up for what you think is right even if you have to stand alone.
CLAUDETTE COLVIN