I see so many ways America uses to rob Negroes and it is sinful and America can't keep holding on, and doing these things.

I went almost naked to see that my mother was kept decent and treated as a human being for the first time in all of her life.

This white man who is saying "it takes time." For three hundred and more years they have had "time," and now it is time for them to listen.

The President of Guinea, Sekou Toure, came to see us on the 13th. Now you know, I don't know how you can compare this by me being able to see a President of a country when I have just been there two days; and here I have been in America, born in America, and I am 46 years pleading with the President for the last two to three years to just give us a chance-and this President in Guinea recognized us enough to talk to us.

You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.

I remember, and I will never forget, one day - I was six years old and I was playing beside the road and this plantation owner drove up to me and stopped and asked me "could I pick some cotton." I told him I didn't know and he said, "Yes, you can. I will give you things that you want from the commissary store," and he named a huge list that he called off. I picked the 30 pounds of cotton that week, but I found out what actually happened was he was trapping me into beginning the work I was to keep doing and I never did get out of his debt again.

I believe in Christianity because the Scriptures said: "The things that have been done in the dark will be known on the house tops."