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

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.

I think they must mix blood, otherwise the human race is bound to degenerate. Mixing blood is marvelous. It makes strong and intelligent men. It takes away tired spirits.

I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.

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.

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