I asked inmate in New York, Warden Fay at that time if, if it didn't make a better inmate out of the Negroes who accepted it and he said, "Yes." So I asked him then what was it about it that he considered to be so danger, and he, dangerous, and he pointed out that it was the cohesiveness that it produced among the inmates. They stuck together.

Nonviolence with Dr. [Martin Luther ]King is only a method. That's not his objective.

I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

You'd have civil war. You'd have a race war in this country.

I believe when a negro church is bombed, that a white church should be bombed.

The only way the two can have equal job opportunities is if black people have factories as, as well as white people have factories.

Nowhere in history has the white man been brotherly toward anyone.