I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.

What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.

Educating a child won't be difficult if you get through to the parent.

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

If you struck your mother or your father, it was punishable by death because you struck at the whole society. You struck at the morality of the society itself. This is what we have lost.

When I was able to go to school in my early years, my third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, convinced me that one day I would be a writer. I heard her, but I knew that I had to leave Georgia, and unlike my friend Ray Charles, I did not go around with 'Georgia on My Mind.'

If we don't unite, chances are we will go back into slavery.