“I was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.”

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.

When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren’t even considered human.

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.

When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack.

There were many African Americans – many, many stories similar to my story.

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.

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.

There was segregation everywhere. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn’t even go into the same restaurants.

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.

When you’ve been abused daily and you see people humiliated and harassed, you just get tired of it.

New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama.

I’d like my grandchildren to be able to see that their grandmother stood up for something, a long time ago.

Rosa Parks wasn’t the first one to rebel against the segregated seats. I was the first one.

We were churchgoing people.

I sleep when the sleep comes down on me.

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.

Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them – if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix.

What happens when you get a big break and you haven’t prepared yourself? That becomes the biggest mistake you’ve ever made. I see it happen all the time.

God will never give you anything you can’t handle, so don’t stress.

I see the world through my eyes. It’s sometimes a strange world.

Acting is a grind, just like music is a grind. Sometimes it takes longer than what you can give.

Sometimes I Google myself just to see what people are saying. But we all do that. If someone tells you that they don’t, then they are lying.

Sometimes when we don’t know the answer, it’s time to simply be with the question.

Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.