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My mother saw nothing inconsistent in her traditional desire to look after her husband and children and her radical politics. She began her civil rights work before most people had ever heard the word 'feminism,' and in those early years, she was focused on racial justice.

My mother didn't set out to surround us with white students or colleagues. My mother just sought a quality education. People have these expectations of who they think you should be. And I say it's because they don't really understand Malcolm X - or his wife.

We grew up in a very strange world, because my mother was up against it all when she had three black children.

For a black male, the sound of the blues is pre-Civil Rights. It's oppression.

I have never experienced racism in the feminist movement, so it concerned me to think that I was unable to see the subject clearly because I came from white, middle-class privilege.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

My mom, Clida, taught my four brothers and me about her father's work to organize black voters in rural Louisiana in the 1950s. We carried her dad's legacy of activism with us. The Civil Rights Movement was present in the daily life of my family in Detroit in the 1970s.

I think young people don't really know that much about the Civil Rights Movement and about the history of African Americans in this country. It's not taught enough in school.

The fact that women are very young in obtaining their civil rights and African-Americans are young in obtaining their civil rights, I think it's about time that we extend that to all Americans, whether straight, gay, purple, green, black, brown.