Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country - to clear the air of the racial mirages, cliches, and lies that this country's very atmosphere has been filled with for four hundred years.

It's an hour during the week where you can just slow down.

I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.

I am really quite proud of most of the people I " know who have "made it," who do things to help people.

Every death is like the burning of a library.

Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.