One of the problems in the United States is the refusal on the part of our young people to remember or to want to remember, or to recognize the experiences of the past as being relevant, germane, important to the present and to the future. They simply don't want anything that's painful. They want to live in a painless society where everything is pleasant, and everything is joyful.

My challenge was to weave into the fabric of American history enough of the presence of blacks so that the story of the United States could be told adequately and fairly.

We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.

We also learn that this country and the Western world have no monopoly of goodness and truth and scholarship, we begin to appreciate the ingredients that are indispensable to making a better world. In a life of learning that is, perhaps, the greatest lesson of all.

I am very fortunate, and I never stopped being thankful.

One feels the excitement of hearing an untold story.

I went to college on my way to be a lawyer. That's all I wanted to do was go back home and help my daddy. I thought we were poor because he was not a good businessman and I was going to become the lawyer who would take charge of the business.