I am not an American; I am one of twenty-two million black people who are victims of Americanism.

Only time [JF] Kennedy made any, took any action to even look like he identified with negroes was when he was forced to. Kennedy didn't even make his speech based on this problem being a moral issue until Negroes exploded in Birmingham.

Essien Udom is a Nigerian. At present he's a professor at Ibadan University.

The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.

...What we need to do in the community, and in the city, and in the state. We need to stop airing our differences in front of the white man. Put the white man out of our meetings, number one, and then sit down and talk shop with each other. [That's] all you gotta do.

Who taught you to hate yourself?

When a man understands who he is, who God is, who the devil is... then he can pick himself up out of the gutter; he can clean himself up and stand up like a man should before his God.