When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren’t even considered human.
CLAUDETTE COLVINWe were churchgoing people.
More Claudette Colvin Quotes
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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 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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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 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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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 was ostracized by my community.
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New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama.
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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 never swore when I was young.
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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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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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What do we have to do to make God love us?’ I always grew up with that. I always used to go around thinking that. ‘God loved the white people better. He must’ve. That’s why he made them white.’
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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.
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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 was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.
CLAUDETTE COLVIN