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

The precise form of an individual's activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity.

My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.

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

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.

I don't think the riots derailed the civil rights movement.

In the old days, you lived in one neighborhood, you knew all your neighbors and your daughter married the guy next door. That was social and economic progress. That model is gone now. We also had a world order that was fraught but fairly stable.