Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.

I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.

Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.

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

I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.

I wondered what I would do if I didn't have my God to turn to and be able to read the Book He had divinely inspired.