There were many African Americans – many, many stories similar to my story.
CLAUDETTE COLVINThere was segregation everywhere. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn’t even go into the same restaurants.
More Claudette Colvin Quotes
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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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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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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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When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren’t even considered human.
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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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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 became aware of how the world is and how the white establishment plays black people against each other.
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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 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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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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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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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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That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.
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