The exceptionalism of a black U.S. President is not important to me. It's what he does - and who he has at the table.

Lethal Weapon 2 used the platform to talk about the apartheid system. That was a very important moment for us.

The civil rights movement didn't deal with the issue of political disenfranchisement in the Northern cities. It didn't deal with the issues that were happening in places like Detroit, where there was a deep process of deindustrialization going on. So you have this response of angry young people, with a war going on in Vietnam, a poverty program that was insufficient, and police brutality. All these things gave rise to the black power movement. The black power movement was not a separation from the civil rights movement, but a continuation of this whole process of democratization.

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.

One of the main purveyors of violence in this world has been this country America.

The strike and its outcome had an enormous impact on the system of education and on our lives as well. The strike began as a response to the college's refusal to hire Professor Nathan Hare [the so-called father of black studies], and certainly unified the college around issues of justice. These issues were reflected in many communities: the Asian American community, Hispanic community, Native American community.

In The Black Power Mixtape , you hear the voice of Angela Davis - not someone playing Angela Davis.