My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large.

Never say no to now

You give me the duty to write about love

Hate is contagious. A few seconds after Donald Trump has told me something hateful, somebody else repeats it. He has legitimized what people only dare say in their kitchens and bedrooms.

Music is a safe kind of high.

A reading is a kind of communion. The poet articulates the semi-known for the tribe.

I am always driven by the terror of humiliation.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful.

There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews of Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.