“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.”

I never swore when I was young.

I became aware of how the world is and how the white establishment plays black people against each other.

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.

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.

Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn’t the case at all.

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.

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.

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.

That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.

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.

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

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

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.

Freaks, they are very prejudiced. You have to have your hair long and talk in a certain way in order to be with them. In order to be the other way you have to have your hair short and wear ties.

You can beat me up, but don’t touch my hair, I will kill you!

The right hairstyle can make a plain woman beautiful and a beautiful woman unforgettable.

If beauty is truth, why don’t women go to the library to have their hair done?

I always wanted to be a hairdresser.

I’m a big woman. I need big hair.

I usually go to sleep with wet hair. When I wake up, it either has a really pretty wave, or I look like a poodle.

I don’t have to psych myself up, or do something special mentally – I look through the scope, get my target in the cross hairs, and kill my enemy, before he kills one of my people.