Racism is a grown-up disease, and we should stop using our kids to spread it.
Ruby Bridges
We may not all be equally guilty. But we are all equally responsible for building a decent and just society.
We have tolerance, respect, and equality in our written laws but not in the hearts of some of our people.
The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry's class was the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to teach us all: Never judge people by the color of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper.
Racism is a form of hate. We pass it on to our young people. When we do that, we are robbing children of their innocence.
I believe that we have to come together, and we have to rely on the goodness of each other.
The people I passed every morning as I walked up the school's steps were full of hate. They were white, but so was my teacher, who couldn't have been more different from them. She was one of the most loving people I had ever known.
You cannot look at a person and tell whether they're good or bad.
If we are about what is good today, then we that are good need to come together to fight what's bad out there.
I pray for my enemies, that God would forgive them.
We all have a common enemy, and it is evil.
If we're gonna get past our our racial differences, it's gonna come from our kids, but they have to be together to do that.
I remember turning onto the street. I saw barricades and police officers and, just, people everywhere. When I saw all of that, I immediately thought that it was Mardi Gras. I had no idea that they were here to keep me out of the school.
A lot of my strength came from my upbringing.
My mother and our pastor always said you have to pray for your enemies and people who do you wrong, and that's what I did.
You cannot look at a person and judge him or her by the color of their skin.
If kids have the oportunity to come together to get to know one another, they can judge for themselves who they want their friends to be. All children should have that choice. We, as adults, shouldn't make those choices for children. That's how racism starts.
We keep racism alive. We pass it on to our children. I think that is very sad.
Once my school was integrated, and I was there with white kids and a few black kids, it really didn't matter to us what we looked like.
My mother had taught me that the only thing you could depend on was your faith, and I had that.
If you really think about it, if we begin to teach history exactly the way that it happened - good, bad, ugly, no matter what - I believe that we're going to find that we are closer, more connected than we are apart.
What I do remember about first grade and that year was that it was very lonely. I didn't have any friends, and I wasn't allowed to go to the cafeteria or play on the playground. What bothered me most was the loneliness in school every day.
Wisdom is a gift but has nothing to do with age. That was probably the case with me.
If my mama said not to do something, I didn't do it.
Kids really don't care about what their friends look like.
As African-Americans, people of that generation felt pretty much if they were going to see changes in the world, they had to make sacrifices and step up to the plate. I'm very proud that my parents happened to be people who did. They were not privileged to have a formal education.
We must absolutely take care of one another.
I want to inspire kids.
I wanted to use my experience to teach kids that racism has no place in hearts and minds.
I had never seen a white teacher before, but Mrs. Henry was the nicest teacher I ever had.
Somehow, it always worked. Kneeling at the side of my bed and talking to the Lord made everything okay.
Evil isn't prejudiced. It doesn't care what you look like; it just wants a place to rest. It's up to you whether you give it that place.
I never got the chance to meet Linda Brown; there were several times we were supposed to meet or be on the same stage together, but life gets in the way, and it never happened.
We have to take care of each other's children.
None of our kids come into the world knowing anything about disliking one another.
We'd get these boxes of clothing in the mail, and my mom would say, 'What makes you think all this is for you? You've got a sister right behind you.' So then I realized, we're all in this together. We have to help each other.
Schools should be diverse if we are to get past racial differences.
I believe it doesn't do yourself any good to hate.
Every day, I would show up, and there were no kids, just me and my teacher in my classroom. Every day, I would be escorted by marshals past a mob of people protesting and boycotting the school. This went on for a whole year.
Our babies know nothing about hate or racism. But soon they begin to learn - and only from us.
There are all kinds of monuments to adults - usually dead and usually white. But we don't often lift up the extraordinary work of children.
I remember what it was like at age 6, not really understanding what was going on around me, but having all these grown-up thoughts running through my head about what I was facing, why this was happening.
Now that I'm a parent, I know that my parents were incredibly brave.
What we, as African Americans, stood on was our faith.
I like to share my story with children, and they are amazed by the story.
I think that racism is ugly and so unfair, and I believe that we all need one another.
It's not who you're going to sit beside at school that matters now: it's what resources will your school have.
Kids come into the world with clean hearts, fresh starts.
We as African Americans knew that if we wanted to see change, we had to step up to the plate and make that change ourselves. Not everyone comes to that realization in their lives, but thank God Linda Brown's father felt that way.
I was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.
