“I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.”

“I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew, the music that pumped from boom boxes full of grand boast and bluster. The boys who stood out on Garrison and Liberty up on Park Heights loved this ...”

“I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere between Mrs.W...”

“Nothing between us was ever planned--not even you. We were both 24 years old when you were born, the normal age for most Americans, but among the class we soon found ourselves, we ranked as teenage...”

“In those years, hip-hop saved my life. I was still half alien to the people around me. I loved them, mostly because I'd realized that there was no other choice. Hip-hop gave me a common language, b...”

“The fear had precedent. Toward the end of the Civil War, having witnessed the effectiveness of the Union's 'colored troops,' a flailing Confederacy began considering an attempt to recruit blacks in...”

“I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.”

“The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do a...”

“The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.”

“Daddy once told me there's a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn't stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there's nothin...”

“When I opened the box, I had to remove myself from whose handwriting it was that I was reading and whose story I was hearing. I had to, or I never would have made it past the first letter. If I sto...”

“After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts like a Chinese nest of boxes oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front in our ancestors, back and back until...”

“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking...”

“My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and be...”

“His body, his mind, his soul, had, for years, served only for the profit of others. He had his own people to whom he was pledged. Three million. They were the currency of his freedom.”