People believe what they want to believe. Even if it isn’t true.

Segregation is growing in degree and complexity as the nation becomes increasingly multiracial.

Perhaps I can’t escape the image that others have created for me, but if I don’t try, I will never know if I can or not.

Fiction has been maligned for centuries as being “false,” “untrue,” yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction.

[Solitary confinement] is terrible. That is terrible. You’re in a grave. You can’t do anything. Everything’s brought to you and you’re in a room all day, except to come out of the showers. So when...

When they reached their ship, Ed gazed out at the bay. It was black. The sky was black, but the bay was even blacker. It was a slick, oily blackness that glowed and reflected the...

All good people agree, And all good people say,All nice people, like Us, are We And every one else is They:But if you cross over the sea, Instead of over the way,You may end by...

Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood; in a...

Our teens are embedded in a culture driven by competition and perfectionism, where success is defined by status, performance and their appearance.

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but...

I would warn any minority student today against the temptations of self-segregation: take support and comfort from your own group as you can, but don’t hide within it.

With wrong people, there has to be a choice, to stay with them and go down with them or reject them and suffer alone.

The words ‘bad timing’ came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning…they did not realize that it was ridiculous...

The relevant question is not whether back then a few extraordinary individuals could overcome a system strongly weighted against them or whether today an admittedly far greater number requiring far less talent can succeed. The...

Music itself was color-blind but the media and the radio stations segregate it based on their perceptions of the artists.

Unwed white girls who became pregnant in the postwar years were considered psychologically disturbed but treatable, whereas their black counterparts were presumed to be biologically hypersexual and deviant. Historian Rickie Solinger demonstrates that in the...

developments,” corporate theme parks. But corporations aren’t interested in the messy ebb and flow of humanity. They want stability and predictable rates of return. And although racial discrimination is no longer a stated policy for...

Having the liberty to have freedom of choice is the greatest thing that each and everyone of us has because that makes us who we are. Do not however use this as an excuse to...

While stationed in Fort Jackson, I experienced racial prejudice for the first time and came to the understanding that humans are not born with prejudice, but learn prejudice. Back home in South Dakota, I only...

I consider myself an American African because we did not come by choice.

[O]ur revolt was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination.

In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation...

Segregation has it all wrong. We should be protected from the people who will leave us in the end, from all the people who will disappear or forget us.

one wonders how much real conversation there is when one party does not, in many districts, have to contend for the votes of minorities, and the other can only elevate minorities into positions of power...