Zitat des Tages von Rosa Parks:
Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.
My only concern was to get home after a hard day's work.
Why do you all push us around?
Whites would accuse you of causing trouble when all you were doing was acting like a normal human being instead of cringing.
As far back as I can remember, I knew there was something wrong with our way of life when people could be mistreated because of the color of their skin.
I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.
In it not easy to remain rational and normal mentally in such a setting where, even in our airport in Montgomery, there is a white waiting room... There are restroom facilities for white ladies and colored women, white men and colored men. We stand outside after being served at the same ticket counter instead of sitting on the inside.
I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.
I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.
I talked and talked of everything I know about the white man's inhuman treatment of the Negro.
At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.
I have never been what you would call just an integrationist. I know I've been called that... Integrating that bus wouldn't mean more equality. Even when there was segregation, there was plenty of integration in the South, but it was for the benefit and convenience of the white person, not us.
Let us look at Jim Crow for the criminal he is and what he has done to one life multiplied millions of times over these United States and the world. He walks us on a tightrope from birth.
You spend your whole lifetime in your occupation, actually making life clever, easy and convenient for white people. But when you have to get transportation home, you are denied an equal accommodation. Our existence was for the white man's comfort and well-being; we had to accept being deprived of just being human.
Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again.
I had felt for a long time that, if I was ever told to get up so a white person could sit, that I would refuse to do so.
Each person must live their life as a model for others.
Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way.
Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.
All I was doing was trying to get home from work.
