One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could get away with it, and that everyone else__ousewives, taxi-drivers, elevator boys, dishwashers, bartenders, lawyers, judges, doctors, and grocers__ould never, by the operation of any generous human feeling, cease to use you as an outlet for his frustrations and hostilities.

Contrary to what the West seems to think, it is not poverty that brings people like us so close to God. It's the fact that no one is more curious than we are to learn why we are here on earth and what will happen to us in the next world.

Notwithstanding the memories of slavery, and in the face poverty, ignorance, terrorism, and subjugation still deeply woven into their lives, the embittered past of blacks was taken onto a much higher plane of intellectual and artistic consideration during the Renaissance.

When the rich and the powerful rise they leave the powerless and the poor without possibility.

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air _ however slight _ lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

If that's the case, waiter, please bring me another piece of cake," Gramps said as lunch was brought to the table, "I'm all for fighting tyranny and oppression.