"Occasionally speaking of Black people generally, in conversation with the still youthful Lorraine Hansberry: "They are beautiful, child."

“How, then, should American literature deal with these people, crushed for centuries beneath an insufferable weight of exploitation, calumny and derision, yet always rising, their presence and their struggle ever mocking the strident pretensions of the nation?”

“Much of what Negroes fight for today is not to gain new ground but to restore positions once dearly won and foully taken away.”

“The forward surge of the Negro people is the most distinctive and progressive feature of Southern politics.”

“From one end of the South to the other law and order have broken down. A public climate has been created in which a Negro’s life is worth no more than a White man’s whim.”

“It is worth noting that if Emmett Till had been a Mississippi farm boy instead of a Chicago lad on vacation in Mississippi, the world probably would never have known his fate.”