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

The women's rights movement of the 1970s had not yet emerged; except for Bella Abzug, I had no women supporters.

By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.

In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.

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.

I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.

A Negro who does not vote is ungrateful to those who have already died in the fight for freedom. ... Any person who does not vote is failing to serve the cause of freedom - his own freedom, his people's freedom, and his country's freedom.