I did take the blows [of life], but I took them with my chin up, in dignity, because I so profoundly love and respect humanity.

We've got to show that blacks and whites are treated equally in the army. Otherwise, what's the point of waging war on Hitler?

I believe in prayer. It's the best way we have to draw strength from heaven.

Sex was a pleasurable form of exercise, like dancing.

I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.

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.

The white imagination is sure something when it comes to blacks.