Jurnee Smollett Quotes

I come from an interracial family: My father is from Nigeria, and so he is African-American, and my mother is American and white, so I rarely see skin color. It's never an issue for me.

I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian neighborhood, but my mom is Filipino-Spanish and my dad is Irish.

My family is part Creole, and we're Indian, and we're also very, very black. My father was so black, he was blue.

Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

What drew me to both study and activism was the formative experience of the civil rights movement.

I think what I came through is great, but my son can take it to another level, not having to fight racism. His mother's a Norwegian and I'm mixed up four or five times, so he can face the world.

When you're biracial, people sort of make you gray - you're not black, you're not white, you're sort of gray; you're 'other.' And I'm fortunate to have parents that were strong enough to say, 'You're not 'other.' You're special.'

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was about getting to know your culture, your history. I know all about my history.

My mom went through civil rights; my dad went through civil rights. My name was Kenya because they wanted to give me an African name.

Six of my 12 grandchildren are black.

My stepmom's from Somalia, my baby sister is African American, my dad was always English, I'm a white man... You may have noticed.

Yes, I have an Australian wife; she is half Bengali, half British.

'Yellow Face' marks my summation of multiculturalism.

The man who raised me is black. Culturally, he made me who I am. He was a theatre director, so he also guided me artistically.

Sometimes I even feel funny to say I'm in a biracial marriage because people are like, 'Oh, he's Asian?' The subtext is, 'Who cares? You didn't marry a black person.'

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.

My mother saw nothing inconsistent in her traditional desire to look after her husband and children and her radical politics. She began her civil rights work before most people had ever heard the word 'feminism,' and in those early years, she was focused on racial justice.

I'd been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.

I'm tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro - that's the Scotch-Irish part.

My Native American heritage was not embraced by our family, and we grew up African-American, so I didn't have a lot of access or history to that line of my family.

Speaking as a mixed-race woman, there aren't many historical stories about people like me.

My father has fair skin, and my mother is dark, and I'm kind of cafe au lait.

Mostly I'm proud to be an African-American woman, but I'm glad I have a universal look as well.

I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood.

So I'm a young boy in the 1940s growing up, seeing Ralph Bunche on a regular basis, seeing Duke Ellington on a regular basis. We know that these people are famous. They're living in the same community as we live in. They go to the same stores and shops.