In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

My brother and I had a really privileged relationship with my parents... They treated us like adults.

The Western stereotype of Africa and its black citizens as devoid of reason and, therefore, subhuman was often shared by white master and black ex-slave alike.

No white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

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

The biggest surprise for me, without a doubt, was that the first black people who came to the United States weren't the 20 who arrived in Jamestown in 1619. All of us had been taught that. Well, guess what? The first African came to Florida in 1513. And the huge shock is we know his name, Juan Garrido, and that he wasn't a slave. He was free! This brother was a conquistador who came with Ponce de Leon. He was looking for the Fountain of Youth just like the white people were.

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.