Any form of integration, forced integration, any - any - any effort to force integration upon whites is actually hypocritical.

It is not a case of our people...wanting either separation or integration. The use of these words actually clouds the real picture. The 22 million Afro-Americans don't seek either separation or integration. They seek recognition and respect as human beings.

I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance's White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah's Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back — and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

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

We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.

Only the whites in the South aren't hypocritical about it. You don't find any more inter - there is just as much social intermixing in the South as there - between the races as there is in the North. Only they - in the South they let you know - where they stand, and in the North they take a hypocritical approach or attitude or reaction.

You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress ... No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I am concerned, as long as it is not shown to everyone of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me.