I was ostracized by my community.
CLAUDETTE COLVINI was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.
More Claudette Colvin Quotes
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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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We were churchgoing people.
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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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When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren’t even considered human.
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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 sleep when the sleep comes down on me.
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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’d like my grandchildren to be able to see that their grandmother stood up for something, a long time ago.
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There were many African Americans – many, many stories similar to my story.
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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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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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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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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.’
CLAUDETTE COLVIN