I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.

I didn't run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place.

A good deed here, a good deed there, a good thought here, a good comment there, all added up to my career in one way or another.

I find myself, at this time in my life, no less challenged, no less plagued, no less intrigued by what I still don't know.

Racism is very painful. That's life. It never ends.

I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.

I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.