When I Was Born, I Was Colored.

I Delighted In The Music Of Africa, The Earliest Of The Slave Plantation Songs, The Transformation Into Christianity And All That Christianity Brought To The Lives Of The Africans Who Were Forced To Come To America.

More Than Once My Mother Would Point Out: "harry Belafonte Is The Best-looking Man On The Planet."

The Catholic Church Had Strict Racial Attitudes And Intolerance For Anybody Who Was Not Catholic. When I Look At A Lot Of Black Ministers And What Went On In The Black Church, I Was More Caught Up With Those Who Were In Cadillacs And Shiny Suits Than I Was With Those Who Were Kingian In Their Style.

I Come From A Sense Of Struggle, A Sense Of Using The Instruments That Were Given To Me To Manipulate The Environment In Which I Found Myself, And Joined Up With Those Who Are Equally As Skillful At Manipulating That Environment, As Was I.

I Became An Anti-fascist, And The More I Saw What Was Happening To The Peoples Of Europe, The Jews, The More I Saw The Deep Cruelty And Inhumanity Of That System And Its Philosophy Of White Supremacy.