Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.

There were these great women in Montgomery, [Rosa Louise] Parks was among them. Jo Ann Robinson [who organized the bus boycott] was among them. It's always these ordinary women and men of grace who have been waiting and seething and planning to change things that are unjust that bring movement.

You'd better stay determined, because that's how our ancestors got us where we are.

God, please help us remember that all the darkness in the world cannot snuff out the light of one little candle. Help us to keep lighting our little candles until a mighty torch of justice sweeps our nation and the world.

You can't be what you can't see.

Luckily, I had incredible parents who, when they saw a problem, didn't say, "Why doesn't somebody do something?" They would say, "Why don't we do something?".

Black women rock the cradle, and whoever rocks the cradle rocks the future.