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

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

You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.

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

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.

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