Claudette Colvin

“The Montgomery Bus Boycott began in December 1955, and by 1956 NAACP leaders came to me and asked me to be part of a lawsuit they wanted to file on my behalf and that of three other women, to challenge segregation on public buses.”

“When I got to 10th grade at Booker T. Washington High, I had a teacher, Miss Geraldine Nesbitt. I think she came from New York. She helped me begin to question things.”

“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.”

“There were many African Americans - many, many stories similar to my story.”

“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.”

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

“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.'”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“I sleep when the sleep comes down on me.”

“Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail.”