First Hand History

"Our kids take education for granted in our country, but those kids have such a desire to learn. It’s beautiful. "

"I did and still feel like I'm not one hundred percent part of the family because I can hear."

"There was this strong, uncomfortable smell in the air. Sometimes, breathing was hard."

"I never really thought that people were different, based on their outside, I’ve always tried to look at people on the inside, and help people "

"Well I guess we are reaching her."

"Well, as a child I was treated as a person that was limited in English. Especially because I was raised, or actually went to school during a time when there was no bilingual education and so I feel like I was treated differently because I only knew Spanish and so the system was trying to teach to English as fast as they could but somehow it was like a sink or swim situation if you learned English you would swim and if you didn’t you were going to sink. "

"Different is good, different is cool, find out about different, you're gonna learn something you might like."

"Not only in United States but also in India, there has been tremendous progress, awareness, and a lot of new programs have started."

"What millions of kids are going through is a silent and invisible epidemic of violence."

"I learn how to see things in other people’s perspectives, and really kind of think through where people are and what they’re going through and how it affects them, and that affects how you deal with other people."

"Mother never helped me with education, because she had no time to. She worked, sometimes in shifts, and in the evenings learned in school and college. She was very busy. I learned in school and took my knowledge from there. School taught me, and shaped me. "

"I feel that I’m able to look at all the blessings in my life, and see that the challenges that we face aren’t as great as other people."

"I was really surprised to find that his elementary school was actually the place where I felt the queerest and the most marginal of any of my other social spaces."

"The parents were very invested in their children’s education, but the downside was they could be very reluctant about the idea of seeing their child leaving their family for college."

"Sometimes not really racism, but people treats the way you look."

"It’s always unfair, no matter where you are, when you don’t have opportunities. Whether it’s here, or Europe, or Middle East, or Asia, it’s always unfair if socially or economically you cannot do what you want to do."

"You won't get a fair chance to compete."

"There’s always this issue of not only tradition versus modernity, but also your own culture versus the imported culture."

"I don’t wish for him to have this life, but there’s nothing I can do about it. When he was young I could give him a really fun life... But as he gets older, there’s less and less that I can do with him. I see his world getting smaller."

"An Asian immigrant and a single mom is a combination of two negative attributes... I would go to the bookstore and I would not be served. I would go to a restaurant and I would not be served."

"... my father left my mother when she was pregnant with me, so when I was born my father wasn’t there, my mother was the only one to take care of me, I had an older brother and sister, and so without my father being there and without him there to earn a living we had difficulty having enough money to get by. That’s the situation as it started when I was a youngster. "

"You are liable to get a fair shake here from justice and our system of government, which doesn’t always happen overseas."

"I could have eaten lunch already, and I ate his and he ate fish head. That was an example of how sharing they were. They had very little, but they shared what they had."

"I think that you should be happy or not freak out if you have a baby with Down syndrome and that you shouldn’t compare children because they’re all gifts from God."

"There used to be this program on TV called ‘Casper the Friendly Ghost,’ and I used to say to my parents that that’s who I was there."

"Nobody knew that day of all that was to come, but what we did know was that it was a Revolution and that it came with ideas of how to fundamentally improve the majority of the population, which was poor."

"Every single child can get a great education, but we're not doing everything we can to make sure that goal is fulfilled."

"The best thing here is getting admissions to schools."

"In terms of politics, making people slightly uncomfortable is how we make progress."

"They would rub their fingers down my arm to see if the color would rub off onto their hands."

"Monday: best day of the week. Great day to get better."

"One of the puppets was in a wheelchair, one of them had a learning disability, and one of them was blind."

"I carried a knife in my boots when I was in seventh and eighth grade. It was just something that you did to protect yourself even though nothing ever happened. "

"I learned from my kids to accept everybody for who they are and to pass on the love. Pass it forward."

"They understood that I was one of the top students and that I was very involved in school, but they still said, ‘You know, the local junior college is a good place for you to go.’"

"A real key piece of it is educating teachers and principals and school administrators that this is happening, this is real."

"It also opened my eyes to what it’s like to be different and for people around you to minimize you because you’re different."

"We don't realize it, but every kid in America has a chance for school and has an opportunity to make something out of themselves."

"Eventually, I couldn’t see anymore. I couldn’t read my papers; I couldn’t dictate letters. I just couldn’t do my job. My boss caught on, seeing all of my mistakes, and she was going to fire me."

"I think it makes a huge difference to have accessibility. I guess some people find it silly to make modifications for a small population, but it’s not that difficult to do."

"I think the reason I, and all the other boys, were chosen was because of our skin color. Everybody was laughing in class, but there were no white kids who had to stay in the room with the principal."

"Social injustice to me is people that have never had opportunities because society is designed such that they don't get the opportunities"

"I learned from all these experiences that it doesn’t matter how much money you have or your race. What matters is your brain, heart, and soul."

"They would march in formation and looked almost paramilitary in appearance. Interestingly, they wore khaki pants and shirts with white webbing belts and white helmet liners. They had KKK in red letters on the helmet, wore trooper boots, and actually showed their faces."

"If you walk into a bookstore in Texas or Florida you’re not likely to see as many people of color in those books as you would see white people or talking animals."

"When they first started integration, I don't remember any incidents happening- I think everything went real smoothly and well planned. It gave the children more opportunities."

"Growing up we never heard about the [Tulsa] Race Riot or Black Wall Street. We never studied about it in school."