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I grew up segregated, but there was not much feeling of being shut out of anything.

When I was a kid, my parents never let me use race as an excuse. They'd say, 'When you walk into a room and it's all white, those kids have to work to stand out, not you.'

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can't believe how much it's a part of your thinking.

I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights.

I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.

It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.

Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other 'isms' grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity.

My parents got me in trouble when I was in school because someone was getting bullied, and I didn't do anything about it. I just watched it happen and then came to the school, and I got cussed out for not helping and not being a part of it.

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it.

Like the Negro League players, I traveled through the segregated south as a young man. Because I was black, I was denied service at many restaurants and could only drink from water fountains marked 'Colored.' When I went to the movies, I would have to sit in the Colored balcony.