Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.

Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show.

After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.

There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.

We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.

If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.

When I first went on the stage I was 17 and under the legal age for performers.