I make a special point of working on Thanksgiving Day. I have friends I go out with but I even make it plain to them. The standard reason for Thanksgiving doesn't mean nothing to me.

As the eldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, I was constantly troubled by a collage of North American southern behaviors and notions in reference to the inhumanity of people. There were questions that I did not know how to ask but could, in my young, unsophisticated way, articulate a series of answers.

No more religion anymore. No more who's a Moslem and who's a Protestant.

I'm one of the people who believes that our losses were greater than our gains. Because before the Civil Rights movement we had entrepreneurship in the black community. Right now, in Harlem, if I wanted to get a shoe repaired, I would have a hard time finding a black shoe repairman. On near about every third corner, you could find a decent black barber, decent black laundry, had restaurants in the neighborhood that were open 24 hours. The food was good at 3 o'clock in the morning as at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'

To be black and beautiful means nothing in this world unless we are black and powerful.

People rise and fall on the basis of the makings of institutions.