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The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.

Before Booker T. Washington, we have small business owners but we do not have a philosopher of black entrepreneurship, and that's what Washington was.

The deals that were made for Black artists at that time were not the deals that were made for white artists.

The system of creating opportunities for those who were by law excluded, you've got to do that. But you mustn't create a perception that the process is devoid of competitiveness... devoid of building a world class, sustainable black business community.

You have little representation of young black men in the business sector, so you have children growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods who don't hear discussions at the dinner table about what goes on in business. It's almost as if we have two nations.

It was necessary, as a black historian, to have a personal agenda.

Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.

The first point was we wanted power to determine our own destiny in our own black community. And what we had done is, we wanted to write a program that was straightforward to the people. We didn't want to give a long dissertation.

One of the prices that we pay for integration was the disintegration of the black community.