There were many African Americans – many, many stories similar to my story.
CLAUDETTE COLVINI 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.
More Claudette Colvin Quotes
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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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When you’ve been abused daily and you see people humiliated and harassed, you just get tired of it.
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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’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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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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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 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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There was segregation everywhere. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn’t even go into the same restaurants.
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I sleep when the sleep comes down on me.
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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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Rosa Parks wasn’t the first one to rebel against the segregated seats. I was the first one.
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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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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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When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack.
CLAUDETTE COLVIN