Credited to Parks wherever it appears, and it reads like her late public speech — she returned often to children, to preparation, and to the language of the movement. But we could not put it in a documented setting: no book, transcript or recording we could reach carries it, so it stands as attributed rather than confirmed.
“Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome” attributed to Rosa Parks (no documented source located)
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? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
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In context
Evoking the world of Rosa Parks — American civil rights activist. Theme: "Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where it comes from
Attributed to
Rosa Parks
Documented source
None located
Occasion
Not established
Status
Widely credited, not documented
Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.
Reproduced as it circulates. The closing phrase echoes the movement anthem We Shall Overcome, which is consistent with Parks’s late public speech but is not on its own evidence of origin.
What we checked
Not on Wikiquote’s Rosa Parks page. The Rosa Parks article ↗ carries a sourced list — her memoir, an NPR interview, the 1995 Washington speech, Quiet Strength — and this sentence is in none of it. It is not listed as disputed either. It is simply not there.
Quote Investigator has not traced it. A site search of quoteinvestigator.com ↗ returns no article on this wording, so the specialists have neither confirmed nor refuted it.
No match in her digitised papers. A full-text search of the Library of Congress’s Rosa Parks Papersreturns nothing for the distinctive phrase “prepare our children” ↗. The collection includes her writings, notes and statements through 1998, which is the period this line is usually placed in.
An occasion is named online; we could not check it. Several reproductions place the remark in a late-1990s conversation with a newspaper columnist. We could not retrieve that column or any contemporaneous report of it, so we are not repeating the claim as established — a specific date and setting is exactly the kind of detail that hardens into fact through repetition alone.
We could not identify where this was first published, so there is no rights status to give, and it is definitely not public domain. Parks died in 2005; anything she said or wrote is in copyright to her estate, and if the wording comes from a newspaper or broadcast report then that publisher holds rights in the reporting. Credit her as shown, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Context
The late Rosa Parks
By the 1990s Parks was a living monument, and she used the position to say something more uncomfortable than the monument version allowed: that the thing she was famous for resisting had not gone away. Lines like this one belong to that late register — less the bus, more the unfinished work.
That is also why the sourcing matters. Sentiments attributed to a figure at this stage of public sainthood tend to get smoothed toward what audiences want to hear. This one is not smoothed — it opens by saying racism is still here — which is a point in favour of it being genuinely hers, and still not the same thing as a citation.
Less the bus, more the unfinished work.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, Parks was a trained NAACP organiser and its Montgomery branch secretary long before 1 December 1955, when she refused to give up her bus seat and set the Montgomery bus boycott in motion. She spent the rest of her life — most of it in Detroit, where she worked for Congressman John Conyers — insisting that the moment was the result of organising, not of tired feet. She died in Detroit in 2005.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this
Rosa Parks, attributed. No documented source located: the wording does not appear in the English Wikiquote article “Rosa Parks”, has not been traced by Quote Investigator, and returns no match in a full-text search of the Library of Congress’s digitised Rosa Parks Papers (all checked 20 September 2026).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome’?” Last verified 20 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/racism-is-still-with-us-but-it-is-up-to-us-to-prepare-our/