“Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.”

“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.”

“Yes, I think it's really important to acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the moment of his assassination, was re-conceptualizing the civil rights movement and moving toward a sort of coalitional relationship with the trade union movement.”

“Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.”

“As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.”

“Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of black people who are in the leadership of the labor movement and this is true today.”

“I never saw myself as an individual who had any particular leadership powers.”

“You can never stop and as older people, we have to learn how to take leadership from the youth and I guess I would say that this is what I'm attempting to do right now.”

“Well I teach in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. So that's my primary work. I lecture on various campuses and in various communities across the country and other parts of the world.”

“To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.”

“I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late '40's and early '50's was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival.”