Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest... beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.

The hate directed against the colored people here in St. Louis has always given me a sad feeling... How can you expect the world to believe in you and respect your preaching of democracy when you yourself treat your colored brothers as you do?

I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.

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

I believe if the white and colored people could get together and be let alone, they would understand each other and consequently love each other.

What am I most ashamed of in my life? Not keeping my promise to my sister and being too scared of America to attend her funeral.

Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.