When the Kerner Commission told white America what black America has always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation’s slums, maintains them and profits by them, white America could not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free - (Chapter 9).

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'

I am not antiwhite, because I understand that white people, like black ones, are victims of a racist society. They are products of their time and place.

... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.

The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.

I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.

Some fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.