Because once the black man becomes the political master of his own community, it means that the politicians of that community will also be black, which also means that he then will be sending black representation or representatives not only to represent him at the local level and at the state level, but, but even at the federal level.

Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.

I think, again, that that does the whole problem a, a disservice. It's not a case of our wanting to mix socially with whites. And when you - and the whites are right in the South when they say that getting a cup of coffee in a restaurant is not going to solve - is all right.

We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us.

The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

During the whole month that negroes were being beaten by police and washed down the sewer with water hoses, Kennedy and - and King was in jail begging for the federal government to intervene, Kennedy's reply was, "No federal statutes have been violated." And it was only when the negroes erupted that Kennedy come on the television with all his old pretty words.