These children and their parents know that getting an education is not only their right, but a passport to a better future - for the children and for the country.

My formative years, until I was 12, was all shaped by Jamaican culture, by that economy, by the people in my family, who are agriculturalists, who were plantation workers, who harvested those crops and took them down to the boats run by the United Food Company, to load those ships at night, hence all the songs that I sing that come from that environment.

Where is the raised voice of black America? Why are we mute?

Wherever I found resistance to oppression, whether in Africa, in Latin America, certainly here in America in the South, I joined that resistance. I took part in the labor movement, in social movements, in the church community. I felt that it was the honorable thing to do and still do.

The Catholic Church had strict racial attitudes and intolerance for anybody who was not Catholic. When I look at a lot of Black ministers and what went on in the Black church, I was more caught up with those who were in Cadillacs and shiny suits than I was with those who were Kingian in their style.

I've always been supportive of the right of Israel as a state, and I've always fought against anti-Semitism, even in my own community.

John say's it's James who started first, James tells the story in reverse. I drag my belt from off me waist, you should have heard dem screaming round de place.