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I'm a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

I have a big passion about civil rights for everyone - whoever is being downtrodden at the moment, it doesn't matter: racial discrimination or sexual orientation or gender. Whatever it is, I'm there. I think I was a born civil rights activist. I can't stand the smashing of a community. It's not fair and it's not right.

Growing up in Mississippi - a state that historically was a place of racial injustice, inequality and oppression - gave me the unique opportunity to experience first-hand the evolution of the civil rights movement through the eyes of my parents, grandparents, and the black elders of our community.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.

I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience.

I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

During the 60's, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

Well, I've been politically involved for a really long time. Growing up in the segregated South, it was a very painful experience for me to live through the open racism of the time.

When I was 15 years old and in the tenth grade, I heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at that time. As I got more and more involved, I saw politics as a means of bringing about change.