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.

So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it's a positive one.

So I'm OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was.

I defend myself by improving myself.

In America, it is difficult to be your own man.

So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.

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.