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.
CLAUDETTE COLVINRosa Parks wasn’t the first one to rebel against the segregated seats. I was the first one.
More Claudette Colvin Quotes
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New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama.
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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 about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.
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I was ostracized by my community.
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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 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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When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack.
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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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When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren’t even considered human.
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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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Rosa Parks wasn’t the first one to rebel against the segregated seats. I was the first one.
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We were churchgoing people.
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I never swore when I was young.
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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.
CLAUDETTE COLVIN