I was blessed to go abroad and bring Americans home from jail in Syria, and Iraq, and Cuba, and Yugoslavia, and Liberia, those are high moments of my life.

The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.

I take my role seriously as a pastor.

Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.

You really need a renewed commitment for the direct investment of jobs at the bottom.

I'm a Third World person. I grew up in an occupied zone [Greenville, South Carolina] and had to negotiate with the superpower, really the colonial power.

We must face the No. 1 critical issue of our day. It is youth crime in general and black-on-black crime in particular. There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. After all we have been through, just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating.