There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.

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.

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.

One who is lost cannot show others the way.

Self-determination could mean independence, confederacy, federal and autonomy.

The people are fashioned according to the example of their kings; and edicts are of less power than the life of their ruler.

At no point, at a very important point: that of having convinced the Indians that they can do things.

To reinvent a newly impeccable you in the most modern of outfits, don't skip on makeup and be sure to have flawless skin and hair. That will have more impact than expensive clothes.

A lot of people were opposed to it. A lot of people were for it. I myself think about it as little as possible.

Painters and poets are obliged to exaggerate the proportions of their figures in order to give true perspective.

I was fascinated by The Lord of the Rings from about the age of eight and that lasted well into my teens.