I Think Literacy Is Everything.

The Biggest Surprise For Me, Without A Doubt, Was That The First Black People Who Came To The United States Weren't The 20 Who Arrived In Jamestown In 1619. All Of Us Had Been Taught That. The First African Came To Florida In 1513. And The Huge Shock Is We Know His Name, Juan Garrido, And That He Wasn't A Slave. He Was Free!

I'd Say Imagine That You Wake Up One Morning When You're Going Through A Midlife Crisis. You're Getting Divorced. Your Kids Won't Speak To You. Their Faces Are Covered With Acne, And You Have To Decide Why You Should Get Out Of Bed. That's The Career You Should Pick. The One That Keeps You Going No Matter What, Even If Your Life Is Falling Apart. That's How I Feel About My Career.

In America One Drop Of Black Ancestry Makes You Black. In Brazil, It's Almost As If One Drop Of White Ancestry Makes You White.

Mama And I Would Go To A Funeral And She'd Stand Up To Read The Dead Person's Eulogy. She Made The Ignorant And Ugly Sound Like Scholars And Movie Stars, Turned The Mean And Evil Into Saints And Angels. She Knew What People Had Meant To Be In Their Hearts, Not What The World Had Forced Them To Become. She Knew The Ways In Which Working Too Hard For Paltry Wages Could Turn You Mean And Cold, Could Kill The Thing That Made You Laugh.

We Can't All Work In The Inner City. And, I Don't Even Think That It Is Incumbent Upon An African-american Intellectual To Be Concerned In Their Work With Problems Of Race And Class. It's Just One Of The Things, That We Here At The Dubois Institute, Are Concerned About.