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.

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.'

There are some long silences in Scandinavian and some Japanese films, when the audience knows action is taking place, but the audience hears no action.

To control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you.

Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil.

Egypt gave birth to what later would become known as 'Western Civilization,' long before the greatness of Greece and Rome.

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, African-American historians began to look at their people's history from their vantage point and their point of view.