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

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

One dance had made me the most famous colored woman in the world.

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

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.

All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.