In 1957, when I was in second grade, black children integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched it on TV. All of us watched it. I don't mean Mama and Daddy and Rocky. I mean all the colored people in America watched it, together, with one set of eyes.

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 first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

Lincoln had a tremendous capacity for personal growth - more than any other American President.

I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black.

Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or below the poverty line is almost the same.

I think literacy is everything.