A Quote by Bryan Stevenson

My parents lived in a poor rural community on the Eastern Shore, and schools were still segregated. And I remember when lawyers came into our community to open up the public schools to black kids.

Bryan Stevenson

Quote Topics

Black Came Community Eastern Kids Lawyers Lived Open Our Our Community Parents Poor Public Public School Public Schools Remember Remember When Rural Schools Segregated Shore Still Up Were

Quote Author

Bryan Stevenson
American - Activist
Born: 1959

I grew up on the Eastern Shore during desegregation. A lot of white parents chose to send their kids to private schools rather than integrate - but not mine. My brother and I both attended and graduated from public schools. It's one of the best things that happened to me.

Ralph Northam

The public education landscape is enriched by having many options - neighborhood public schools, magnet schools, community schools, schools that focus on career and technical education, and even charter schools.

Randi Weingarten

I grew up in a segregated community: I couldn't go to the public schools, beaches, certain parts of town.

Bryan Stevenson

I lived in a low-income Black community, grew up with kids on welfare and with Black folks driving Cadillacs, going to private schools and everything in between. My literal biological aunties are deeply religious. I got it all.

Maya Wiley

I have the students for six hours a day. The community has them for 18 hours, plus prenatal and early childhood. I don't believe the schools create (the achievement gap), but our responsibility is not to add to it. We won't eliminate the gap until the community makes education a priority, but the schools can't wait for the community to do its part.

Bill Vaughan

Everybody wants to have sex - you don't have to have a baby when you're 16. You don't have to do drugs. I think our Sunday schools should be turned into Black history schools and computer schools on the weekend, just like Hebrew schools for Jewish people, or my Asian friends who send their kids to schools on the weekend to learn Chinese or Korean.

Henry Louis Gates

In the '80s, a lot of kids, if you were kind of bright, you got bussed to schools out of your community. So you wouldn't know the talented musicians who lived around the corner from you.

Kamasi Washington

Our public schools need to be in the control of parents and the community, as opposed to businessmen who see the $23 billion budget as a means to giving no-bid contracts to their cronies.

Charles Barron

I think the black community is no different from any other community. We need to take responsibility for how we live together. We need to be personally responsible for keeping our streets clean, our schools safe, and our houses peaceful.

Pearl Cleage

Growing up in Augusta in such a protected and loving community is something that I really enjoy talking about. I love talking about - even though I grew up, of course, in the time of segregated schools: Brown vs. Board of Education came along after I was already in first grade.

Jessye Norman

Our political establishment refuses to use the word 'segregated.' They call the schools diverse, which means half black, half Hispanic, and maybe two white kids and three Asians. 'Diverse' has become a synonym for 'segregated.'

Jonathan Kozol

Apparently almost anyone can do a better job of educating children than our so-called 'educators' in the public schools. Children who are home-schooled by their parents also score higher on tests than children educated in the public schools. ... Successful education shows what is possible, whether in charter schools, private schools, military schools or home-schooling. The challenge is to provide more escape hatches from failing public schools, not only to help those students who escape, but also to force these institutions to get their act together before losing more students and jobs.

Thomas Sowell

At present, black children are more segregated in their public schools than at any time since 1968. In the inner-city schools I visit, minority children typically represent 95 percent to 99 percent of class enrollment.

Jonathan Kozol

The public schools in our neighborhood were so bad that the teachers in the school said you shouldn't send your kids here. My mother called around and found a school that was willing to give both me and my brother scholarship money. It's a classic story about black parents wanting more for their kids than they had for themselves.