We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.

Among Negroes it is a bad omen when someone knocks on the door of a house where a person has died.

My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.

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

There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.

You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.