If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

It makes sense that whatever the topic is, it's more compelling if you can provide the audience with a range of perspectives, and you can cross disciplines. And you don't have to control what people take out of it.

Personally I discovered that you could go through the academy as a young scholar, come out, and almost immediately have an impact on the academic environment.

The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.

So one of the things that happened with integration in the South is they found that the black teachers were much more educated than the white teachers.

Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You're scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic.