I remember during Easter one year, I was to get a pair of black

The words of Claudette Colvin — “I remember during Easter one year, I was to get a pair of black patent shoes but you could only get them from the white stores, so my mother drew the outline of my feet on a brown paper bag in order to get the closest size, because we weren't allowed to go in the store to try them on” — are not simply a recollection of childhood; they are a window into a time when dignity itself was segregated. In this single, humble memory lies the weight of a nation's moral struggle. The brown paper bag becomes a symbol — of exclusion, of resilience, and of a mother’s ingenious love under oppression. What seems, on the surface, a simple act of buying shoes, was in truth an act of quiet defiance in a world that sought to deny even the smallest gestures of equality.

In the style of the ancients, we might say: the soul of a people is tested not in great wars alone, but in the small humiliations that carve themselves into memory. Claudette’s story, set during Easter, the season of resurrection and renewal, contrasts the holiness of hope with the cruelty of segregation. The black patent shoes, symbols of innocence and joy, become vessels of injustice — shoes she could not even try on because of the color of her skin. Yet, within that injustice, her mother’s act — tracing the feet of her daughter — stands as an emblem of love’s ingenuity. The oppressors built walls; a mother drew lines on paper and found a way through.

The origin of this quote comes from Claudette Colvin’s own life — a name often overshadowed by history, yet luminous to those who remember. Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, Claudette — a young teenager — had already done so. At just fifteen years old, she sat defiantly in that segregated space, invoking the words of the Constitution and the righteousness of equality. She was arrested, insulted, and ignored by much of the world, yet her courage became a seed that later helped grow the tree of the Civil Rights Movement. The girl who once could not enter a shoe store would one day walk the path of history with unshakable grace.

In her memory of that Easter, we hear not bitterness, but truth — the truth of what it means to endure injustice and yet remain human. Every act of survival, every adaptation in the face of cruelty, is a kind of protest. The mother’s drawing on a brown paper bag speaks to the deep wisdom of the oppressed: when you cannot walk through the door of equality, you find another way to stand tall. When the system denies you a name, you write your own upon the wind. This is how a people preserve dignity in a world designed to strip it away.

Consider also the Easter symbolism embedded in this story. Easter celebrates resurrection — the victory of life over death, of love over despair. Claudette’s memory of that day, therefore, becomes not just a story of exclusion, but of rebirth through resilience. Though the world said she was unworthy to enter, she grew into a woman who changed it. Her life, like Easter itself, teaches that suffering is not the end — that every wound, if borne with courage, becomes a source of transformation.

We may recall here the story of Harriet Tubman, who too was denied the simplest freedoms and yet forged a path to liberty, guiding others to safety under the cover of night. She, like Claudette’s mother, turned necessity into invention, pain into power. Both women understood the truth that freedom begins not in laws, but in the spirit — in the refusal to let one’s humanity be defined by oppression. From the plantation to the bus seat, from the paper bag to the dream of justice, the same unbroken will has carried forward through generations.

The lesson of Claudette’s story is clear and eternal: dignity can be denied, but never destroyed. When the world builds walls, love and courage will find their way through the cracks. Each of us is called to the same strength — to face our own injustices, whether great or small, with the creativity and endurance of those who came before us. We may not live in the same time, but the challenge is unchanged: to make the world a little fairer for those who follow.

And so, remember the brown paper bag — not as a symbol of deprivation, but as a relic of triumph. It reminds us that the smallest acts of care can defy great cruelty, and that even when denied entry, we can still leave footprints on the path to justice. Claudette Colvin’s story is a testament that love endures where hatred fails, that hope rises where injustice tries to bury it, and that the measure of humanity is not found in privilege, but in persistence.