I'm a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black?

My father was the funniest man I ever met. He made Redd Foxx look like an undertaker.

Like the amazing story of Anthony Johnson. This man was a slave, then became free, accumulated 250 acres, and even had his own slave, a black man who took him to court in Virginia in 1654.That man argued that he should be freed like an indentured servant. But Johnson, who we believe was a pure African from Angola, said, "No way, you're my slave." And the court agreed.

There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.

If Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race.

Diversity doesn't mean black and white only.

My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.