I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back. My legs and feet were not hurting, that is a stereotype. I paid the same fare as others, and I felt violated. I was not going back. (Rosa Parks)
I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free. (Rosa Parks)
It was just a matter of survival... of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl and hearing the Ku Klux Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down. (Rosa Parks)
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. (Rosa Parks)
was the catalyst of one of the most important freedom movements not only in American history but in world history .. indeed she became the symbol and personification of our nonviolent struggle for liberation and human dignity. (Rosa Parks)
Some of her early memories were of white people who treated blacks kindly, particularly a Yankee soldier who said she was cute and treated me like I was just another little girl, not a little black girl, ... Rosa Parks My Story. (Rosa Parks)
I only knew that as I was being arrested it was the last time I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind, (Rosa Parks)
When the history of this country is written, when a final accounting is done, it is this small, quiet woman whose name will be remembered long after the names of senators and presidents have been forgotten. (Rosa Parks)
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. (Rosa Parks)
The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose. I had decided that I would have to know, once and for all, what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama. (Rosa Parks)
Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others. (Rosa Parks)
All I was doing was trying to get home from work. (Rosa Parks)
I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen. (Rosa Parks)
He was the first, aside from my grandfather and Mr. Gus Vaughn, who was never actually afraid of white people, ... So many African Americans felt that you just had to be under Mr. Charlie's heel - that's what we called the white man, Mr. Charlie - and couldn't do anything to cross him. In other words, Parks believed in being a man and expected to be treated as a man. (Rosa Parks)