It's no accident that most of the great black spokespersons and leaders understood the centrality of self-affirmation, self-respect and self-love.

I think philosophy is all about lived experience, which is to say life in the streets, life in a variety of different contexts.

Isabel Wilkerson's book is a masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don't miss it!

Try to just be true to ourselves, whoever we are, but willing to grow, even as we're true to ourselves.

Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever." That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope.

Interrogate yours hidden assumptions

I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself.