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I had very supportive parents that made the way for me, even at a time when there were very few women - no women, really; maybe two or three women - and very few, fewer than that, African-American women heading in this direction, so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.

Leah Ward Sears
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When I was growing up, so many of the important changes for African-Americans were being made in the United States Supreme Court and were being made by lawyers. I followed the court very intensely and wanted to do that for my life.
Leah Ward Sears
I had very supportive parents that made the way for me, even at a time when there were very few women - no women, really; maybe two or three women - and very few, fewer than that, African-American women heading in this direction, so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.
Leah Ward Sears
I've always been very interested in the struggle for human rights, not just here but abroad, and I wanted to be an inside player in that struggle. I wanted to make the laws reflect our ideals and ideas in this democracy that is America.
Leah Ward Sears
I don't think there is such a definition of a perfect family, but I do think that our marriages are in crisis. Our families are in crisis. And I think the African-American family is at one of the worst stages it's been at in a very long time in this country. Fatherlessness is rampant.
Leah Ward Sears
We need to in this country begin again to raise civil discourse to another level. I mean, we shout and scream and yell and get very little accomplished, but you can disagree very much with the next guy and still be friends and acquaintances.
Leah Ward Sears
I'd like to see marriage count again among African-Americans and not just in the society in general.
Leah Ward Sears
I think people need to commit to one another before they commit to bringing children into the world because that's the optimum arrangement for children, not to take anything at all away from women who have to rear their children by themselves.
Leah Ward Sears
To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.
Stephen Ambrose
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.
Edward James Olmos
Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double.
Chaka Fattah
It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov
It is up to African leaders to show their will and political courage in order to assure that this new pan-African institution becomes an efficient instrument and not a place for endless discussions.
Omar Bongo
Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally.
Cat Stevens
I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.
J. M. Coetzee
I have a very personal interest. I am a Miami-Dade voter. One of the issues is that my vote and so many other votes of women and African Americans in Florida are being discounted or discarded. I want my vote to count.
Patricia Ireland
Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have played an important role in enriching the lives of not just African Americans, but our entire country.
Ric Keller
When I became a director, I wanted to convince a very reluctant Sidney into allowing me to go on the journey of his life. Sidney had gone ahead of every other African American actor.
Lee Grant
I think one of the political problems we have in this country is the perspective that all soccer moms think alike, all African-Americans think alike.
Anne Northup
The adoring crowds and overwhelming Democratic support in the 2008 election was based largely on joy at jettisoning Bush and the appeal of electing a superbly qualified charismatic African American leader.
Mary Frances Berry
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.
Barack Obama
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
Danny Glover
Eight generations of African-Americans are still waiting to achieve their rights - compensation and restitution for the hundreds of years during which they were bought and sold on the market.
Cynthia McKinney
An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write.
William Labov
A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.
Boutros Boutros Ghali
Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place.
Richard Leakey
I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.
Tim Robbins
In the final analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American people who make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population.
Lin Biao
What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.
Roy Ayers
From the time of independences until the end of the Cold War, in spite of the participation of a considerable number of African states in the non-aligned movement, everyone in fact chose to align with one or another of the two major blocks.
Omar Bongo
Sports and entertainment have always been windows of opportunity for African Americans, when other doors were closed.
Lynn Swann
Nowadays, people always say, how come he's doing such young shows? But they never mention The Mod Squad. I was very proud of that show. It's the first time an African-American guy kissed a white girl.
Aaron Spelling
My son Wesley has just turned 13. He was 12 during the recording of this record and he is quite a drummer already and has been studying drums since he was four, but he's also very interested in African percussion and studies percussion.
Lee Ritenour
At the same, we need to remain sensitive to the reality that we are still an African society in which the majority of the people and communities live under severe deprivations and afflictions that are no fault of theirs.
Ibrahim Babangida
I concentrate on the southern African subcontinent.
Nigel Dennis
Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.
Bobby McFerrin
Most African Americans, especially the men and women from my generation, would accept the nationalist gambit that says only European Americans can be racists, which is an interesting gambit.
Anthony Braxton
I have strong views about South African politics and I still don't feel I need to make public statements.
Zola Budd
We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.
Barack Obama
The highest percentage of African Americans own their own homes today than ever in our nation's history.
Ed Gillespie
It appears that the present-day form of African American English is not the inheritance of the period of slavery, but the creation of the second half of the 20th century.
William Labov
Epidemics historically have tended to kill the very young and the very old, but AIDS is different: Those ages 20 to 40 are most affected, which means that so far over 12 million African children have been orphaned because of AIDS.
Marvin Olasky
People have been killing because of racial differences since the time of Adam and Eve, but in this country racism has been primarily aimed at African Americans.
Bob Cousy
As much as everyone wants to downplay racism, it exists. There's a great mistrust among some African-Americans of white people.
Steve Mitchell
I was able to do To Sleep with Anger, a very powerful film about African Americans, their spirituality, and the things that happened within a small community and a family.
Danny Glover
Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.
Michael N. Castle
I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.
Miriam Makeba
The United States spends more money on African aid than any nation on earth.
Tony Snow
Mbeki began to write a study of the workings of apartheid policy in the reserves - the areas set aside in law for African occupation - as early as 1959 and 1960.
Ruth First