CLAUDETTE COLVIN

We were churchgoing people.

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.

I wanted to be an attorney. My mother would say I never stopped talking. I always had a lot of questions to ask, and I was never satisfied with the answer. A lot of things I wasn't satisfied by.

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.

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

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

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.

I was ostracized by my community.

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

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

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.

Back then, as a teenager, I kept thinking, why don't the adults around here just say something? Say it so they know we don't accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there's no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'

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

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

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.

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

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.'

We learned about people like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington and Marian Anderson. Harriet Tubman was my favorite.

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

I sleep when the sleep comes down on me.

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.

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.

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.

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.