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?

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

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.

The old Catholic parties hounded me with a Christian hatred from station to station, city to city, one stage to another.

Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.