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

King thought he understood the white Southerner, having been born and reared in Georgia and trained a theologian.

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

In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.

We African Americans have now spent the major part of the 20th Century battling racism

My parents never told us that our great-grandmothers had been slaves.

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