Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.
I think segregation is bad, I think it's wrong, it's immoral. I'd fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don't need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that.
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.'
There was segregation everywhere. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants.
Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all.
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.
Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people.
We should not forget that in the '60s, George Wallace's motto was 'segregation forever,' and that he did nothing to deter bombings and other acts of violence and, by his actions, condoned them.
My parents were 30 years older than I was, and my parents had my brother and I ten years apart. My parents grew up in segregation, and they both lived in all-black neighborhoods and grew up with large black families. I didn't have any of that, and I didn't understand feeling so differently and being treated so differently.
We're now segregating our schools based on economics; we're segregating our schools based on where a child's parents live. And it has the same corrosive effect of destroying people's opportunity as racial segregation did.
