The death penalty is used in such a blatantly racist way in the United States. There is no way that can be defended under any kind of definition of justice by anybody.

Racism had grown out of slavery and exploitation and was very hard to eradicate quickly and completely.

To become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

How lovely it is to live with a sense of community. To live where you can drop in the street and a million people will come and help you.

Black Revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. We are shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quetin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us.

Freedom! you askin me about freedom. I'll be honest with you. I know a whole more about what freedom isn't than about what it is, 'cause I've never been free. I can only share my vision with you of the future, about what freedom is.

I must confess that waltzes do not move me, I guess I hummed the blues too early, and spent too many midnights out wailing to the rain.