“Racism is a grown-up disease, and we should stop using our kids to spread it.”

I was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.

I believe it doesn’t do yourself any good to hate.

My mother had taught me that the only thing you could depend on was your faith, and I had that.

The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry’s class was the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to teach us all: Never judge people by the color of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper.

I want to inspire kids.

That’s really what my work is all about – bringing kids together.

You cannot look at a person and tell whether they’re good or bad.

If you really think about it, if we begin to teach history exactly the way that it happened – good, bad, ugly, no matter what – I believe that we’re going to find that we are closer, more connected than we are apart.

We must absolutely take care of one another.

We have tolerance, respect, and equality in our written laws but not in the hearts of some of our people.

Racism is a form of hate. We pass it on to our young people. When we do that, we are robbing children of their innocence.

Now that I’m a parent, I know that my parents were incredibly brave.

I pray for my enemies, that God would forgive them.

Evil looks like you and I. I know what evil looks like, and I know that it comes in all shades and colors.

Kids come into the world with clean hearts, fresh starts.

My mother and our pastor always said you have to pray for your enemies and people who do you wrong, and that’s what I did.

Don’t tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won’t respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, ‘Melissa you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep.’.

God has proven himself as a faithful father. Now it falls to us to be trusting children.

Let us leave a splendid legacy for our children…let us turn to them and say, this you inherit: guard it well, for it is far more precious than money…and once destroyed, nature’s beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.

I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life. There were lots of kids from different races and poor families. People had to struggle to get through the day.

Kids are great. That’s one of the best things about our business, all the kids you get to meet. It’s a shame they have to grow up to be regular people and come to the games and call you names.

My humanity, in common with all of God’s children, gives the greatest flight to my full range of my possibilities.

It’s the first time it’s happened to me and maybe the last. It’s a strange sensation, not normal for me. I can’t remember scoring three goals, even when I was a kid.

I strongly believe the black culture spends too much time, energy and effort raising, praising, and teasing our black children about the dubious glories of professional sports.