There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months.

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.

Your calling is in what you read, think and talk about

Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.

[On her dogs:] I have four now. My friends tell me if I get any more they'll have to hold an intervention.

But in the end, I suppose, we only have one life to lead, and the roads not taken would always outnumber and outshine the roads we end up taking, day by day, without plan.

Clinging to each other won't save you maggots when the boot falls!

Trust me, I know what self loathing is. But to kill myself? That would put a damper on my search for answers. Not at all productive.

What does it mean when a person is such a pacifist that they get shot? I can never understand that.

Dale Earnhardt told me it doesn't matter if fans boo or cheer, as long as they're making noise.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.

I always love training at crazy times - it's an edge I'm creating over everyone else.