My daddy wanted me to be a farmer; feel the smoothness of Alabama clay and become one of the first blacks in my town to own land. But, I was worried about my history being caked with that southern clay, and I subscribed to a different kind of teaching and learning in my bones and in my spirit.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

If we are going to be masters of our destiny, we must be masters of the ideas that influence that destiny.

What example do you have of anything like the Pyramids outside of Africa? You have them in Mexico, but that can be traced to early African migration. So the African created mound culture.

If people do not know where they have been and what they have been they don't know what they are. They don't know where they going to have to go or where they still have to be.

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.'

In Africa, the woman was co-equal. In Europe, the woman was a vassal. To some extent, she still is.