We must change the system of education and instruction. Unfortunately, history has shown us that brotherhood must be learned, when it should be natural.

I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.

Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.

One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore... I felt liberated in Paris.

Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in your heart, the devil in your body?

I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.

My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose... Africa... but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race... in some ways even more so, because they gave the sweat of their brow and their blood in slavery so that many parts of America could become prosperous and recognized in the world.