Something which we think is impossible now is not impossible in another decade.

Lack of encouragement never deterred me. I was the kind of person who would not be put down.

I grew up in a house where nobody had to tell me to go to school every day and do my homework.

New Orleans may well have been the most liberal Deep South city in 1954 because of its large Creole population, the influence of the French, and its cosmopolitan atmosphere.

The fact is that racism, despite all the doomsayers, has diminished

When Thurgood Marshall became a lawyer, race relations in the United States were particularly bad.

My father kept his distance from working-class American blacks.