“When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.”

I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961

Today whenever women gather together it is not necessarily nurturing. It is coalition building. And if you feel the strain, you may be doing some good work.

I went to a church where you could not sing out loud in the service until you had been saved.

Coming up in the African-American culture, we were taught that we belonged to the universe and society was wrong in the way it dealt with us. We had to learn to express and affirm values not from the winning position.

Mothering/nurturing is a vital force and process establishing relationships throughout the universe.

If, in moving through your life, you find yourself lost, go back to the last place where you knew who you were, and what you were doing, and start from there.

Personally I discovered that you could go through the academy as a young scholar, come out, and almost immediately have an impact on the academic environment.

What would you be like if you had white hair and had not given up your principles? It might be wise as you deal with coalition efforts to think about the possibilities of going for fifty years.

If I had been at a University I don’t think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work. I don’t think I have been as successful

There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.

In fact when Sweet Honey was ten years old it was too big for me to run, and I knew it, but I ran it for another thirteen years because I couldn’t convince other people to really do it. And this year, I’m not running it.

At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.

If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition.

I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I got my doctorate in 1975.

If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it’s probably not broad enough a coalition.

I just don’t think one person has that much to contribute to any subject

China is a great country with a great culture, populated by fascinating, industrious and talented people.

If we continue to think and live as if we belong only to different cultures and different religions, with separate missions and goals, we will always be in self-defeating competition with each other.

Russia is a part of European culture. Therefore, it is with difficulty that I imagine NATO as an enemy.

The Russian people have their own cultural code, their own tradition.

The Russian people and Russian culture are the linchpin, the glue that binds together this unique civilization.

Producing an animation series merely to fill time slots in the broadcast schedule is like generating cultural pollution.

A youthful heart does not tolerate injustice and cannot bow to a “throw-away culture” nor give in to the globalization of indifference.

Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people.