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.
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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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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We were churchgoing people.
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That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.
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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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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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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 was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.
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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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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 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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New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama.
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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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I sleep when the sleep comes down on me.
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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.
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I never swore when I was young.
CLAUDETTE COLVIN