Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not vagrants - hanging from trees as a child was traumatic for him.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

Like Guitar in Son of Solomon, and Son in Tar Baby, he believed that harmony could never exist between the races.

For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.