Rosa Parks My Story Quotes

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, [...] the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

The overseer beat him, tried to starve him, wouldn't let him have any shoes, treated him so badly that he had a very intense, passionate hatred for white people. My grandfather was the one who instilled in my mother and her sisters, and in their children, that you don't put up with bad treatment from anybody. It was passed down almost in our genes,

That was a difference between black slaves and white indentured servants. Black slaves were usually not allowed to keep their names, but were given new names by their owners.

What I learned best at Miss White's school was that I was a person with dignity and self-respect, and I should not set my sights lower than anybody else just because I was black.

I couldn’t articulate how the name made me feel. Shawn had meant it to humiliate me, to lock me in time, into an old idea of myself. But far from fixing me in place, that word transported me. Every time he said it—“Hey Nigger, raise the boom” or “Fetch me a level, Nigger”—I returned to the university, to that auditorium, where I had watched human history unfold and wondered at my place in it. The stories of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were called to my mind every time Shawn shouted, “Nigger, move to the next row.” I saw their faces superimposed on every purlin Shawn welded into place that summer, so that by the end of it, I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested. I did not think of my brother as that person; I doubt I will ever think of him that way. But something had shifted nonetheless. I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.

At the time i didn't realize why there was so much Klan activity, but later I learned that it was because African-American soldiers werre returning from World War Iasn acting as if they deserved equal rights because they had served their country.

I always advise students who like to read that they should read everything form license plates on cars to signs on the highway, fiction, nonfiction, newspapers, magazines—I mean everything. You never know what you might learn or when and where you can use the information.

One of my greatest pleasures there was enjoying the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing and knowing that white folks were doing the preparing instead of me. I was 42 years old, and it was one of the few times in my life up to that point when I did not feel any hostility from white people.

One of my greatest pleasures there was enjoying the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing and knowing that white folks were doing the preparing instead of me. There was swimming in the man-made lake, volleyball, square dancing. It was quite enjoyable to be with at Highlander. We forgot what color anybody was. I was forty-two years old, and it was one of the few times in my life up to that point when I did not feel any hostility from white people.

It was just a matter of survivalーlike getting off the roadーso we could exist form day to day.

I had decided that I would not go anywhere with a piece of paper in my hand asking white folks for any favors. I had made that decision myself, as an individual.

We had a saying that we worked "from can to can't," which means working from when you can see (sunup) to when you can't (sundown).

Two years had passed, and still I had not told the boys anything. I had not told them that their grandfather was gay. I wanted to. I wanted them to know. It seemed like every month a new state was taking up the issue of gay marriage, and it seemed like every month another teenager killed himself because he was being mocked or threatened or bullied for being gay, and I wanted my sons to know that I considered this the most important moral issue we faced as a country since Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King...

Don’t call me that,” I said. “You don’t know what it means.” “Sure I do,” he said. “You’ve got black all over your face, like a nigger!” For the rest of the afternoon—for the rest of the summer—that was what he called me. I’d answered to it a thousand times before with indifference. Now, I was alive to it. I couldn’t articulate how the name made me feel. Shawn had meant it to humiliate me, to lock me in time, into an old idea of myself. But far from fixing me in place that word transported me. Every time he said it—“Hey Nigger, raise the boom” or “Fetch me a level, Nigger”—I returned to the university, to that auditorium, where I had watched human history unfold and wondered at my place in it. The stories of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were called to my mind every time Shawn shouted at me to move to the next row. I saw their faces superimposed on every purlin Shawn welded into place that summer, so that by the end of it, I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested.

...if you can't treat this person properly there is something fundamentally wrong with your system.

Don’t call me that,” I said. “You don’t know what it means.” “Sure I do,” he said. “You’ve got black all over your face, like a nigger!” For the rest of the afternoon—for the rest of the summer—that was what he called me. I’d answered to it a thousand times before with indifference. Now, I was alive to it. I couldn’t articulate how the name made me feel. Shawn had meant it to humiliate me, to lock me in time, into an old idea of myself. But far from fixing me in place that word transported me. Every time he said it—“ Hey Nigger, raise the boom” or “Fetch me a level, Nigger”—I returned to the university, to that auditorium, where I had watched human history unfold and wondered at my place in it. The stories of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were called to my mind every time Shawn shouted at me to move to the next row. I saw their faces superimposed on every purlin Shawn welded into place that summer, so that by the end of it, I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested. I did not think of my brother as that person; I doubt I will ever think of him that way. But something had shifted nonetheless. I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.