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Segregation, in a sense, helped create and maintain black solidarity.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Segregation never brought anyone anything except trouble.

When I was growing up, our nation was partitioned: Blacks were segregated by law in the South and largely by custom in the North, though it, too, had segregation laws. Our best universities had quota systems. Many white communities had real estate covenants to keep nonwhites out.

Cotton was a force of nature. There's a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

Like the Negro League players, I traveled through the segregated south as a young man. Because I was black, I was denied service at many restaurants and could only drink from water fountains marked 'Colored.' When I went to the movies, I would have to sit in the Colored balcony.

Ninety years after slavery, blacks were still segregated from whites. They still had separate drinking fountains, separate restrooms, separate neighborhoods, and separate schools. They still were expected to sit at the back of the bus.

My family was a poor farming family, and we lived under absolute segregation.

I much preferred the approach at the anarchist camp, with its shared tasks and collective responsibilities. Everyone played their part. There was no division between workers and consumers.

Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!