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You spend your whole lifetime in your occupation, actually making life clever, easy and convenient for white people. But when you have to get transportation home, you are denied an equal accommodation. Our existence was for the white man's comfort and well-being; we had to accept being deprived of just being human.

I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me.

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.'

I never felt that I was supposed to be white. Or black, either. My parents just wanted to let me be who I needed to be.

I was conscious of the fact that it could be to my disadvantage to marry a white guy - that some folks would hold that against me.

I'd been told that when you first put your feet on African ground, you'll be hit by a feeling of overwhelming understanding, like you've returned home and suddenly belong. Quite frankly, I didn't feel that.

The prejudice was so bad in the United States at that time that a dark person with a white person would not be served in a restaurant. My father, mother, and I would try it occasionally. We would sit there, and the food would never come.

It's been a struggle for me because I had a chance to be white and refused.

Any time I claimed to be white, that would be unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense in people's minds. If I'm white, how can I walk through a department store and still have people scared that I'm going to rob them? Which, that can still happen.

I think if you live in a black-and-white world, you're gonna suffer a lot. I used to be like that. But I don't believe that anymore.