When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.
I never thought I was breaking a glass ceiling. I just had to do what I had to do, and it never occurred to me not to.
Together we can and must fight for justice for our children and protect them from draconian tax cuts and budget choices that threaten their survival, education and preparation for the future. If they are not ready for tomorrow, neither is America.
Family and moral values are so central to everything that I am.
You really can change the world if you care enough.
Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.
No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.
Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.
I'm sure I am impatient sometimes. I sure do get angry sometimes. I think it's outrageous how hard it is to get this country to feed its children and to take care of its children, to give them a decent education.
Hunger and malnutrition have devastating consequences for children and have been linked to low birth weight and birth defects, obesity, mental and physical health problems, and poorer educational outcomes.
Remember and help America remember that the fellowship of human beings is more important than the fellowship of race and class and gender in a democratic society.
Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.
I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders.
Don't feel entitled to anything you didn't sweat and struggle for.
The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.
We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home and the most to institutionalize him.
I've always hated being hemmed in or seeing anybody being hemmed in. Even when I was the smallest child, I couldn't bear being told I couldn't drink at a so-called white drinking fountain.
A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back - but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.
The key is that your children are aware that you love them a lot, and that you are there when they really, really need you. If a kid was ill, I would simply leave a meeting and go home.
We have the capacity to make sure that every mother has pre-natal care. Yet, we don't do it. What is it about America? It says we don't value children and families. We are hypocrites.
