“I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back. My legs and feet were not hurting, that is a stereotype. I paid the same fare as others, and I felt violated. I was not going back” (Rosa Parks). Black people could simply not go outside and ride a bus home from work without being criticized. This diminished the name of the American Dream at the time ‘everyone had a chance to live the American Dream’, but if black people did not have a chance how could they fulfill their dreams? Rosa parks explains in two different interviews her thought process in what was going through her mind at the thought of her arrest. 

“In one, he was laughing and happy. In the other, his head was swollen and bashed in, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, and his mouth twisted and broken... I couldn't get Emmett Till out of my mind, until one evening I thought of a way to get back at white people for his death” (Muhammad Ali). Ali explains that he ‘thought of a way to get at white people for his death’, showing the common anger that many black people shared at the time towards white people. The American dream was tarnished in the name of racism because it was not a reality for black people, the American Dream had no value in the eyes of people of color because of the cruel actions of racists preventing a successful future for minorities.