Quote

I'd like to see marriage count again among African-Americans and not just in the society in general.

I've gotten a firsthand view at the destruction that black men and black women not being able to stay and build healthy relationships has had on the black family and black children.

After Emancipation, black women married earlier and more often because they were legally free to do so for the first time, and that was true until after World War II. But middle-class white women married less and later.

Well of course there's been a great deal of progress over the last 40 years. We don't have laws that segregate black people within the society any longer.

Interracial marriages were basically legalized, but nevertheless, there was a social stigma attached to them for a long time to come. I imagine that's going to be true for same-sex marriages - that people's emotional comfort level with it will not fully materialize for decades.

It is over one hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The Negro people in the United States have taken plenty and they have reached a stage where they have decided that they are not going to take any more.

But I think the possibility of a black and white society feeding each other's expertises, living harmoniously, will probably go along in fits and starts now but at least it has a great constitution now to back it up.

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.

We still have to create things for African American women. Just like Tyler Perry is doing it, we can't wait for things to happen; you have to go and make and create roles and go to people.

There are hundreds of stories I've heard from black women from my generation, generations before me, and the next, that have never been given an opportunity to fulfill their dreams.