"There were only about 30 Black kids in my class. It was the 1980s and there was still a lot of racism, a lot of isolation, separation. I remember being targeted in certain classes,"

"“I did not come out in the bars. I came out into activism."

"It’s a long road that we’ve gone down, but it’s not over. There’s a division in America today, and it’s time for a reconciliation."

"Tears started streaming down my face because the power of forgiveness is something great. If my dad could forgive George Wallace, who am I to say that I can’t forgive."

"What can you do? What are you going to do? We need a healing in America right now. We need a healing going on in the Heartland. We need a healing going on in Mississippi"

"If a gay person doesn’t have healthcare, or a job that provides healthcare, that’s economic—plus gender, plus LGBT. It is all intertwined,All the issues hold high importance. When everything is not balanced the way it should be in society, you have a lack of justice. I could leave CAF someday and work in affordable housing because it is all tied together.”"

"“I had left an abusive marriage. I did not get involved with women because of this, but after leaving the relationship I found I was attracted to one of my co-workers,”"

"The high school environment was very traumatic for me, but it was a powerful learning experience. It wasn’t easy, but it made me in a lot of ways. Seeing what is right and what is wrong and not backing down from that and refusing to have my voice stifled."

"And so I believed,that these limitations were prescribed by Islam, and as a good Muslim girl, I should comply. The reward would be a picture-perfect life, which meant good grades, getting into a great college, marrying a wonderful man, having a baby within two years and then pursuing graduate school. I lived that illusion for many years."

"I live in Los Angeles, in the Eagle Rock neighborhood, for people who are familiar with Los Angeles. I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1933. My birthday is October 9th. In a couple of days, I’ll be 88 years of age."

"But when Black women sing, we seem to be given permission to perform pain for others to consume. People demand that Black women singers emote suffering and go so far as to call it their “best” music"

"Happiness and joy don’t sell as well as suffering and crawling our ways up seemingly insurmountable hills. No, people are incredibly entertained by Black women’s suffering to the point of wishing ill upon us to see what the output will be"

"I had three brothers and a sister, who died at about six weeks of age. I was the elder sister and I used my age to my maximum advantage. But I also was expected to, because as I got older and my mom worked, she needed me to help out. I had to boss my brothers sometimes because I was left in charge. For example, during high school, I was in complete charge of the household during one summer."

"We are all the same people. Understand that the boat just went to different places. We originated in the same spots. We are all the same"

"No one wants to hear that we might be in a psychological state that weakens us or renders us unable to serve them; we must be strong at all times and no one wants to hear otherwise"

"What our ancestors and elders have been trying to do is make things better for each generation. But we equate better with proximity to whiteness and we have to stop doing that… Sometimes the consequence is a separation from cultural traditions and affinity… But cultural memory is strong. Even when you are displaced or removed or separated from each other, that memory is there"

"The last thing I'm interested in is someone who is slapping a label on themselve as a way to be recognized as a good person"

"There’s a privilege to being able to go to school and see someone standing at the front that looks like you. It’s not until you get the teacher who looks like you, who’s teaching a class on African American studies. That changed my life. I said, ‘What is this? I did not know any of this!’ It was the first time that I felt like I was learning something about where I came from that was not revolving around being subservient to someone else or less than someone else"

"Well, white people already had that. So, what do they gain out of this? Black people are free to shop. But what do the white people get [that they didn't already have]"

"I read “The Education of The Negro Prior To 1861” and I understood what Carter G. Woodson was talking about. The pain that I felt that it took me becoming an adult to first learn these things was traumatizing to me. And all I could think to myself was, ‘What about everyone else? They’re not studying themselves. What will they become?’ And that’s where we get stuck in a lot of things"

"I noticed that students are more receptive to videos than they are to assigned readings and things like that. And so I’m trying to negotiate, ‘How do we make that happen?’ How do I let them know that this is still an ongoing thing: That 100 years ago, we were still talking about issues of racial discrimination, sexist discrimination. That this is not a new thing? … So, trying to bridge those gaps is a little bit difficult. And I think that there is a lot of apathy"

"So any opportunity I have to be a part of a forum (to) engage people to celebrate and to amplify diverse voices and to hold on — in the face of all these attacks on (diversity, equity and inclusion), things like that — to the very simple idea that diversity makes us better, that’s always a good thing"

"This really makes sense because what we're doing is conspiring to shut down entire systems of oppression"

"We are challenging that system and so we have to conspire. We have to plot and plan the ways in which we can tear those systems down"

"I, as an older person need to be like, ‘All right, I’ll work with you on this.’ I’ve tried to pass this torch, you know, and be supportive, but we can’t just point fingers at them and be like, ‘Oh, they’re lazy. They don’t want to do anything"

"I have been really focused on this idea that I’m coming from a line of people who started this work, and I have to continue"

"I’m really glad to be a part of that because I think that I represent so many — I hate to say it — marginalized identities: I am African American. I am a woman. I am a queer person. I am disabled. I’ve got a lot of these things going on that inform my daily life"

"The people who tend to call themselves allies are usually the people with privilege, who will not have a mutual benefit from whatever they're trying to help with"

"The mutual benefit would be, 'Wow, now both black and white people won't be suspected of shoplifting"

"Prosthesis products are widely available in terms of being able to dress fashionably. I have one for swimming, one for strapless dresses, and regular bras for other wear."

"It costs less than getting your hair done three times a year. And if you don't have the surgery, then you're asking to die."

"If you see a problem and don’t seek a solution, you have no right to complain,"

"My entire breast was removed in a modified radical mastectomy, and I didn’t bother with reconstructive surgery,"

"If every woman in Philadelphia had a Pap test once a year no woman need die of uterine cancer."

"A lot of people opposed our civil rights efforts. I had to do what I thought was the most important thing. That’s all there was to it."

"It was what I wanted to do and I didn’t see why I couldn’t do it."

"I had to do what I thought was the most important thing."

"I ruined Christmas for everyone because I couldn’t figure out how a reindeer could fly. I mean, they just aren’t built for flying, anyone could see that. So I had to reject either the truthfulness of adults or the conclusions of my own mind."

"Follow your dream. You got two feet and a head? Keep going."

"Because of my family and our community, my childhood was unique. I never learned what I couldn’t do — as a child, as a woman, or as a black person."

"My professional career in medicine has been inspired mainly by the many badly needed services to youth in the Black community."

"We must teach these people the laws of health; we must preach this new gospel, That gospel, was that the respectability of a household ought to be measured by the condition of the cellar."

"Ever since the evacuation of Americans of Japanese ancestry and Japanese along the Pacific Coast was proposed, I have pointed out that the issue was one of race and on that basis affected anyone who was physically distinguishable as ‘colored’"

"To visit evacuation [evacuated] neighborhoods and talk with neighbors of the ‘evil, treacherous, fifth column menaces’ who are being summarily moved away, who have been adjudged guilty without any trial at which to claim innocence was to acknowledge an event with all earmarks of a legalized community lynching."

"“Friends, this is how Hitler made little Nazis: by reaching the children and youth through stories and pictures, he taught them to fear and hate certain groups"

"Joint hosts on the negroes’ invitation would be Nisei, American Indians and other Americans whose physical characteristics make them detectable. I have heard of no such observance during Brotherhood week."

"Through friends and newspapers I have maintained a fairly close contact with the evacuee-victims of our lack of confidence in American education and government agencies. On Christmas Eve it was my pleasure to have as a houseguest an old friend who is teaching in the relocation center at Poston. I hasten to suggest that Mr. Leffingwell could find among the Japanese and Nisei internees some real characters whose story, recounted by him in picture, would set before his small readers an example of courage, sensitivity, forgiveness and humility such as would set his cartoon aside from the petty humdrum of its fellows."

"Americans of Chinese ancestry share in disproportionate measure the apprehension of other non-Whites with regard to the summary treatment of Americans of Japanese ancestry. Tightening of residential restrictions against them, for instance, in the neighborhood surrounding San Francisco’s ‘Chinatown’ gives basis for their fears."

""Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making."

""It is commonly said that men are forward to believe whatever is connected with their own interest. This in common cases is true; but it is also true, that when some very great and unexpected good news is brought to us, we find it very difficult to credit it."