A Dream Deferred Is A Dream Denied.

I Do Not Want No Pretty Woman. First Thing You Know, You Fall In Love With Her-then You Got To Kill Somebody About Her. She'll Make You So Jealous, You'll Bust!

Anyday, One Can Walk Down The Street In A Big City And See A Thousand People. Any Photographer Can Photograph These People - But Very Few Photographers Can Make Their Prints Not Only Reproductions Of The People Taken, But A Comment Upon Them - Or More, A Comment Upon Their Lives - Or More Still, A Comment Upon The Social Order That Creates These Lives.

Let America Be America, Where Equality Is In The Air We Breathe.

Negro Writers, Just By Being Black, Have Been On The Blacklist All Our Lives. Do You Know That There Are Libraries In Our Country That Will Not Stock A Book By A Negro Writer, Not Even As A Gift? There Are Towns Where Negro Newspapers And Magazines Cannot Be Sold Except Surreptitiously. There Are American Magazines That Have Never Published Anything By Negroes. There Are Film Studios That Have Never Hired A Negro Writer. Censorship For Us Begins At The Color Line.

I Felt Very Bad In Washington. . . I Didn't Like My Job, And I Didn't Know What Was Going To Happen To Me, And I Was Cold And Half-hungry, So I Wrote A Great Many Poems.