When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination.

Hear, O children of justice, the words of John Lewis, warrior of the Civil Rights Movement and faithful servant of truth, who declared: “When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn’t like it.” These words are plain, yet they burn with the weight of sorrow and the fire of resistance. They are the testimony of one who gazed upon the cruelty of his age, and instead of bowing to it, rose to challenge it.

The origin of this saying lies in the childhood of John Lewis in the segregated South of America, where every street corner bore witness to division and every building whispered injustice. Signs marked by cruel words—white and colored—hung above bathrooms, water fountains, and bus seats, reminding all who passed that society had been carved in two. This was the world into which Lewis was born, a world that sought to divide by skin what God had joined in humanity. But even as a child, he saw through its cruelty. He confessed simply: “I didn’t like it.” Within those words lies the seed of revolution: for every great movement begins not with grand speeches, but with the refusal of a human heart to accept injustice.

Consider the story of Rosa Parks, who in 1955, weary of indignity, sat upon a bus and refused to yield her seat to a white man. Her defiance was born from the same simple conviction: I don’t like it. Out of such defiance grew the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a fire that spread through the land, awakening thousands to stand together. Lewis, still a young man, would join in this rising tide, his heart already stirred by the signs of cruelty he had seen in his youth.

Lewis’s words also echo the witness of the ancients. When Moses saw the Egyptian strike the Hebrew, something rose within him and he declared with his deeds, I don’t like it. When the prophets of Israel saw oppression of the poor, they cried aloud to kings and priests, I don’t like it. This simple stirring of the soul against injustice has always been the root of transformation. The world is not changed by those who are comfortable, but by those who cannot bear to see suffering without resistance.

Yet Lewis did not stop at dislike; he transformed that feeling into action. He marched across bridges where batons fell, he sat in seats where mobs spat, he raised his voice in places where silence was demanded. His dislike of injustice became the fuel of courage, and his courage became the hope of millions. Thus, his words are more than memory; they are a summons, calling each of us to recognize the signs of injustice in our own time and to declare, as he did, I don’t like it.

Therefore, O listener, the lesson is clear: pay attention to what your heart rejects. When you see discrimination, when you see cruelty, when you see division made into law, do not harden yourself into acceptance. Say with the voice of conscience, I don’t like it. For in that moment, you join the company of prophets, reformers, and liberators, who began their journeys not with wealth or power, but with the refusal to remain silent before wrong.

Practical action lies before you. Look around you: in your workplace, your schools, your communities. Are there divisions that wound the dignity of others? Are there signs—perhaps not written on walls, but written in custom, in silence, in neglect—that separate and demean? Challenge them. Speak against them. Support those who are burdened by them. Let your heart’s honest voice guide you to action, for change begins not in halls of power, but in the simple, stubborn resolve of ordinary souls.

So remember the words of John Lewis: “I saw those signs… and I didn’t like it.” His story teaches us that even a child’s dislike of injustice can grow into a man’s mission to transform the world. May we, too, look upon the signs of our time with unflinching eyes, refuse to accept them, and let our refusal grow into action that bends the long arc of history toward justice.