Madame, this child is gifted, and I heard that enough that I started to believe it.

If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity, and you don't take it, you may never have another job.

It all was so clear. It was just like the picture started to form itself.

There was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light,

birth over life.

Every day I wake up and decide.

Today I'm going to love my life.

Decide.

My advice is if they don't break your leg once when you go in that place stay out of there. And then along come these differential experiences that you don't look for, you don't plan for,

but boy you better not miss them.

Welcome to what it takes, a podcast about passion, vision, and perseverance from the Academy of Achievement.

I'm Alice Winkler, and just a quick reminder, our Twitter handle is what it takes now.

When Coretta Scott was growing up on a farm on the outskirts of Marion, Alabama, she dreamed

of a career in music. She had no intention of marrying a minister.

She had no inkling that she alongside her husband would become one of the country's

leading figures in the movement that won civil rights for African Americans.

She could not have imagined she'd be an icon worldwide of dignity, of righteousness, and of hope. These were all far

beyond the grasp of a young black girl growing up in Alabama during the 1930s and 40s.

I know something about what it is like to be a young person struggling

to succeed against adversity.

As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was

told one way or another almost every day of my life that I wasn't as good as a white child. When I went to the movies

...