Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Quotes

It was a particularly interesting and exciting time, and the European political and artistic establishment was turned on by the Civil Rights Movement and the artistic revolution that was becoming a part of jazz.

My parents grew up during the Harlem renaissance.

Architecture will always express the technical and social progress of the country in which it is carried out. If we wish to give it the human content that it lacks, we must participate in the political struggle.

I think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time... not just African-American. He singled-handedly revolutionized the political, artistic, and historical discourses about America.

We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs … black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history.

There are very few African Americans who have had as much impact on American society as Bill Cosby.

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.

Well, protest is central to the evolution of black American culture. It was protest that really finally won our freedom for us. Beyond that, it's always interesting to note that it expanded the idea of democracy.

All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.

Tupac has always been somebody who represented a higher consciousness of what it means on both sides of the coin to be black in America. He and Prince were leaders who moved to the beat of their own drum, and I can only hope to follow in their footsteps.

I think that there are artists of different genres whose calling is to use their art to hope to affect and better the human condition - whether it's System of a Down, or Rage Against the Machine, or Public Enemy, or the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, or Pete Seeger. It's a group that I'm proud to be counted among.

Maya Angelou was the voice of three generations. Her poetry spanned our journey, chronicled our hearts and documented our struggles as we moved from the orations of Martin Luther King to the presidency of Barack Obama.

Obama's presence opened a new field for writers, and what began as curiosity about the man himself eventually expanded into curiosity about the community he had so consciously made his home and all the old, fitfully slumbering questions he'd awakened about American identity.

As we've seen time and again, women and girls who are out there working, they are truly force multipliers, spreading opportunity through their families and communities - and not just by creating programs and nonprofit organizations, not just by hiring other women, but also by serving as role models themselves.

The projects that I end up doing, that I want to be involved with in any way, have always been projects that will be impactful, for the most part, to my people - to black people.

With abolition, it's necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it's equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?

By 1916, as Madam Walker herself was developing more assertive views on race, she was becoming eager to assume her place alongside Harlem's famous, influential and intriguing residents.

We want to get people of color out to vote, because their vote matters. Every politician tries to capture it. But it's More Than a Vote because we want to come up with what's our ask, and hold these politicians' feet to the fire to make real change.

I've seen how business can transform communities.

Midwives not only save lives. They are also actors of social change.

We want to create a community of girls who will be empowered to become catalysts for transformation in their communities.

I think, what I would communicate to people, if you are really keen in helping the world, you could spend so much quality time in terms of coaching, learning, providing great energy to the social entrepreneurs.

In 2014, I left my job and launched TransTech Social Enterprises, a for-profit and nonprofit hybrid model focusing on the well-being of the trans community, not on external profits for shareholders.

Watching President Obama, for the first time in my life, one of us was running for president. He seemed like one of us - and I got behind him, and I got excited about his message and what he continues to say he's going to do. The day he was elected president, Prop 8 happened. It was this bizarre dichotomy - world history - good and bad.

We understand bringing girls into the tech space is about giving them skills to create social impact and change in their community.