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.
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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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 was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.
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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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That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.
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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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When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack.
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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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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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New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama.
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I never swore when I was young.
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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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There were many African Americans – many, many stories similar to my story.
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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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