I'm looking forward to the time when we all look like Polynesians..

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice..

We can see that the complexity we witness inside the African-American community today has always been there. Black people were just as noble and just….

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched..

America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the country to live up to t….

The Western stereotype of Africa and its black citizens as devoid of reason and, therefore, subhuman was often shared by white master and black ex-sl….

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitiv….

People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was….

Where do real conversations about citizenship occur? In our schools. Think about the things you learned in first grade. "My Country 'Tis of Thee," "I….

It is the black poet who bridges the gap in tradition, who modifies tradition when experience demands it, who translates experience into meaning and ….

The first slave came to Florida in 1526. The first one we know by name, Esteban, which means Stephen, came a couple of years later. So, we start with….

If you don't tell your stories, other people will tell their story about you. It's important that we nurture and protect these memories. Things chang….

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 i….

There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees..

Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at….

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge..

I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most i….

Precisely that, covering 500 years of African-American history in six hours. I've been working on this for seven years. The biggest challenge was dec….

In a one-hour documentary, you can tell maybe ten stories. That's how the documentary is structured. I wrote to forty of the greatest historians of b….

I find that people today tend to use them interchangeably. I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studie….

My producers and I worked with these consultants and came up with seventy [stories] which we think are exemplary of the larger arc of African-America….