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.

I delighted in the music of Africa, the earliest of the slave plantation songs, the transformation into Christianity and all that Christianity brought to the lives of the Africans who were forced to come to America.

I am a man who perceives life in a certain way, a man who rejects things that defecate on humankind, who rejects anything that will not give people room for dissent.

I come from a sense of struggle, a sense of using the instruments that were given to me to manipulate the environment in which I found myself, and joined up with those who are equally as skillful at manipulating that environment, as was I.

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

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.

From the point of view of the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised, the wretched of the Earth... there will never be peace until their condition has been alleviated and until their humanity is in full bloom.