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For African-American people, I am in the business of inventing a reality that gives a different perspective - on history, on crime, on art, on love.

From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.

We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.

We African Americans have now spent the major part of the 20th Century battling racism.

We examine and highlight the history of the African descendants in America, and know that each and every one of us has come this far because of our faith in this country.

One of the biggest things I understood in a program like that was that it allowed more young African American scholars to do field research in the Caribbean and in Africa than had ever happened before in the history of the country and since.

I did a book in 1996, an overview of black history. In that process I became more aware of a lot of the black inventors of the 19th century.

I didn't have that many black people in my life, so I had to sort of search them out. And I didn't grow up in America, but I identified as much with their writing about the black experience as I did with their writing about the human experience.

The African Americans' story is one that seems to be a repeated commitment to a scenario for success and failure. With each failure, the blow is that much more traumatizing until finally one reaches a point where there is to some degree an internalization, skepticism, fatalism, and expectation that it isn't going to work.

I fully recognize and appreciate the many substantial contributions of black Americans and other minorities to the creation and preservation and development of our great nation.