We never see ourselves as heroes and sometimes when we do it is a hero that has made a fortune as a clown or a boxer. And there is no lasting value in either one of those.

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.'

We have different levels of slavery. We've got educational slavery. All the major religions of the world, even Christianity and Islam, are engaged in some form of servitude of people. I don't look favorably on either one although I think properly practiced all religions are basically good.

You look at the Pyramids. They're not one fraction of an inch off in terms of their alignment. They were built without a bonding agent.

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