You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage as I like to put it and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.

The breakdown of the black community in order to maintain slavery began with the breakdown of the black family. Men and women were not legally allowed to get married because you couldn't have that kind of love. It might get in the way of the economics of slavery. Your children could be taken from you and literally sold down the river.

Such a faith would be fatal to my reason to my liberty and even to the success of my undertakings it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave an instrument of the will and interests of others.

Action and faith enslave thought both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection criticism and doubt.

If Liberia has failed then it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery.

Although we have in theory abolished human slavery recognized women's rights and stopped child labor we continue to enslave other species who if we simply pay attention show quite clearly that they experience parental love pain and the desire for freedom just as we do.

The perfection of our union especially our commitment to equality of opportunity has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said 'In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.'

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

My grandmother lived to be 100 years old. Her grandmother was a slave yet she was a college graduate in the Spellman class of 1917. She taught art for 50 years and she saved her Social Security checks for her children's education.