The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

An impressively researched and documented collection of the finest thought produced by writers throughout the African Diaspora. A magnificent achievement.

Dr. King's Nobel Prize had a more powerful transforming effect on him than I think he realized at the time.

Diversity doesn't mean black and white only.

The first slave to read and write was the first to run away.

So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.