“I remember when I went down to preach at the (King birthday) national celebration in 2003, and the (U.S.) Secretary of Education's people came to me before I was going into the pulpit and said, 'We need to know, are you going to say anything about the president or about the administration? I went over to Mrs. King and (told her) they're asking what I'm going to speak about, and if I'm going to talk about the administration. Now, you're the one who invited me here, what do you think? She said, 'You speak the truth and you answer to nobody.' And that was the kind of woman she was. She made it very clear. She believed in what she did and gave her life for it.”
“If we don't give them the knowledge to love themselves, beyond the information that God loves them, we're missing the boat at the prime time of building self-esteem. Unfortunately, we do not have American history books that do that for us. . . . There comes a time when you have to go past the Black History Month program.”
“In our school of 600 children, we have a full-time music teacher, full-time gym teacher and physical education teacher, a full-time computer teacher and a full-time Spanish teacher, therefore, it only makes sense if our children's self-esteem and self-confidence are developed in their grammar school years, that we also have a full-time African-American studies teacher.”
