Jealousy we understood and thought natural... But envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.

It's bliss when you give up all that stuff that separates you from other human beings. It's hard, but you break down all that stuff.

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.

If you take racism away from certain people - I mean, vitriolic racism as well as the sort of social racist - if you take that away, they may have to face something really terrible, misery, self-misery, and deep pain about who they are.

There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.

[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.

One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.