Very few, if any, first-generation black or white or Asian kids will pursue a Ph.D. They'll pursue the professions for economic security. Many will go to law school and/or business school.

Most black leaders, whether left, right or center, from Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney on in the middle of the 19th century have not even wondered about the merits of the capitalist system.

Kansas City Lightning succeeds as few biographies of jazz musicians have. . . This book is a magnificent achievement; I could hardly put it down.

I want to be black, to know black, to luxuriate in whatever I might be calling blackness at any particular time, but to do so in order to come out on the other side, to experience a humanity that is neither colorless nor reducible to color.

My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as 'Tarzan' and in programs such as 'Ramar of the Jungle' and 'Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.'

The first slave came to Florida in 1526. The first one we know by name, Esteban, which means Stephen, came a couple of years later. So, we start with the stories of Juan Garrido and Esteban to show that African-American people have been here a century longer than anyone thought, and that the diversity we see in the African-American community today has existed since the beginning.

It turns out one of my ancestors fought in the Continental Army, so I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution.