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.

The mission of the Ruby Bridges Foundation is to create educational opportunities like science camp that allow children from different racial, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds to build lasting relationships.

If kids have the opportunity 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.

I think that it’s not just about having equal rights, I mean, that’s important, but it’s also about allowing our children an opportunity to get to know one another.

Good and evil come in all shades and colors. Evil is not prejudiced, evil just needs an opportunity to work through you.

Please God, forgive these people because even if they say those mean things they don’t know what they’re doing.

Don’t follow the path. Go where there is no path and begin the trail. When you start a new trail equipped with courage, strength and

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

From age 7 to about 37, I had a normal life and not a very easy one.

Throughout my life, my prayers have actively sustained me – held me up, carried me through.

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.

I wish there were enough marshals to walk with every child as they faced the hatred and racism today, and to support, encourage them the way these federal marshals did for me.

Today and Everyday I stand against Injustice and in solidarity with our Asian, Asian-American & Pacific Islander Brothers and Sisters.

We stand United against Racism!

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.

Bravery knows no age or gender.

I think racism is something that is passed on and taught to our kids, and that’s a shame.

I would dream that this coffin had wings, and it would fly around my bed at night, and so it was a dream that happened a lot, and that’s what frightened me.

In order to truly make lasting positive change — to keep Dr. King’s dream moving forward — we need to think big and act big.

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.

Each and every one of us is born with a clean heart. Our babies know nothing about hate or racism. But soon they begin to learn – and only from us. We keep racism alive. We pass it on to our children. I think that is very sad.

We may not all be equally guilty. But we are all equally responsible for building a decent and just society.

My mother said to me, ‘Ruby, if I’m not with you and you’re afraid, then always say your prayers.’

Love is Love. Better to Love than Hate!!!

Our elders said back then that if Black folks really wanted to see Change, they had to step up to the plate and do it themselves. Somebody has to be First. Will that be you?

Learn from these monuments, whether we like them or not, and put them in their context.

When it comes to love, never be reckless with someone else’s heart.

My father’s parents were sharecroppers who worked the land under the broiling Mississippi sun. Sharecroppers didn’t own the land they farmed. They paid rent to the landowner in whatever crops they raised and struggled to survive on what was left.

At the time, I knew little about the racial fears and hatred in Louisiana, where I was growing up. Young children never know about racism at the start. It’s we adults who teach it.

I believe that history should be taught in a different way. History definitely should be taught the way it happened — good, bad or ugly. History is sacred. For me history is a foundation and the truth.

When everyone in the neighborhood was over at my house congratulating my family on me passing the test, I thought they were congratulating me because I passed a test to go to college straight from kindergarten because I was so smart.

I think there’s no point in hating.

Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.

She is my touchstone because if I hadn’t seen her and seen what happened, I would have gone on and never gotten involved. I was just thunderstruck by that mob and her stoic dignity, and so I went back and watched it again and again.

The funny part about the test was that six children passed it to go to the all-white schools, but none of them were boys, it was all girls. Later my parents found out that the two other girls in my district had been taken out by their parents because they thought it was going to be a bad idea. I was going to William Frantz alone.

I went through the door, and I remember going into an empty classroom and thinking that I was too early. When actually, what happened was all the parents rushed in, removed their kids and never sent them back. I spent the whole year in an empty classroom with just my teacher.

I then realized that it wasn’t Mardi Gras or college, it was about me going to school there. I wasn’t mad at the boy because he said his mother said not to play with me because I was a nigger. ‘If my mother said not to play with him because he was another race, I wouldn’t.’

I’ve been told that my ideas are grandiose. Yes, they are. However, so were the ideas that marched me through screaming crowds and up the stairs of William Frantz Elementary more than 50 years ago.

That first morning I remember mom saying as I got dressed in my new outfit, ‘Now, I want you to behave yourself today, Ruby, and don’t be afraid. There might be a lot of people outside this new school, but I’ll be with you.’

The only bad thing about burning your bridges behind you is that the world is round.

The person that impacted my life the most would have to have been my father because he shaped me into who I am today.

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.

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.

It’s not who you’re going to sit beside at school that matters now: it’s what resources will your school have.

We must absolutely take care of one another.

Somehow, it always worked. Kneeling at the side of my bed and talking to the Lord made everything okay.

Kids come into the world with clean hearts, fresh starts.

Administrations and administrative faculty work very hard to see that schools are diverse as much as possible.

We have to take care of each other’s children.

My family – my mother and father had gone through such a hard time that by the time I graduated from sixth grade, they were separated.

All of our schools should be good enough to attract a healthy racial mix, which, I believe, leads to the most effective learning for everybody.

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.

I believe in my prayers.

It’s taken me a long time to own the early part of my life.

I remember the first time seeing myself on TV, when my family was watching the documentary ‘Eyes on the Prize’ for the first time. There were pictures of people going up the school stairs, and Mom said, ‘Oh, that’s you!’ I said, ‘I can’t believe this. This is important.’

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’m the mother of four.

I pray for my enemies, that God would forgive them.

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.

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 do think that some people are born as old souls.

You cannot look at a person and tell whether they’re good or bad.

I felt like there was something I needed to do – speaking to kids and sharing my story with them and helping them understand racism has no place in the minds and hearts of children.

All of us, no matter what we look like, we all have a common enemy, and that is evil. If we don’t understand that and come together, then evil will win.

I now know that experience comes to us for a purpose, and if we follow the guidance of the spirit within us, we will probably find that the purpose is a good one.

My message is really that racism has no place in the hearts and minds of our children.

Racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it.

I was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.

Evil looks like you and I. I know what evil looks like, and I know that it comes in all shades and colors.

We have tolerance, respect, and equality in our written laws but not in the hearts of some of our people.

None of our kids come into the world knowing anything about disliking one another.

You cannot look at a person and judge him or her by the color of their skin.

I like to share my story with children, and they are amazed by the story.

I wanted to use my experience to teach kids that racism has no place in hearts and minds.

When I think about our babies today and them not being safe in school, I think that should be the next civil rights movement, you know, is to ban the assault weapons so that our babies can be safe.

Schools should be diverse if we are to get past racial differences.

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.

What we, as African Americans, stood on was our faith.

That’s really what my work is all about – bringing kids together.

I’ve seen schools in Detroit where the windows are broken, where there’s no heat, and children are sitting with their coats on in class in the middle of a snowstorm. I’ve also seen schools in California with Olympic-sized swimming pools and cafeterias like five-star restaurants.

If my mama said not to do something, I didn’t do it.

My mother had taught me that the only thing you could depend on was your faith, and I had that.

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.

I think that racism is ugly and so unfair, and I believe that we all need one another.

A lot of my strength came from my upbringing.

It’s time to get past our racial differences. We owe it to our children to help them keep their clean start.

I want to inspire kids.

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.

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.

I’m not a very public person.

Kids really don’t care about what their friends look like.

I had never seen a white teacher before, but Mrs. Henry was the nicest teacher I ever had.

When the scary subject of race is finally broached, kids want to talk and talk. It’s very satisfying.

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.

Now that I’m a parent, I know that my parents were incredibly brave.

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.

I believe it doesn’t do yourself any good to hate.

I believe that we have to come together, and we have to rely on the goodness of each other.

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.

Wisdom is a gift but has nothing to do with age. That was probably the case with me.