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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.

Take the time to discover how African-Americans have had a great impact on this country. In science, education, literature, art, and politics.

You've got to appreciate the things that come from the art of the Negro and from the heart of the man farthest down.

I wanted my art to deal with very formal concerns and to deal with very material concerns, and to deal with antecedents and art history, which for me go very far beyond just the influence of African-American artists.

The African-American tradition, in the main, is very, very church-based, very, very Christian. It accepts, you know, certain narratives about the world. I didn't really have that present in my house.

My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.

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.

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.

I wanted to identify that the black experience is American experience.

I studied African American studies, and I read these slave narratives and the escape narratives of people that were able to escape slavery and always found those stories intriguing and powerful and inspiring.