I just want to be really clear about this: Anyone who has read Colin Powell's biography - there's an entire section where he talks about experiencing segregation. Colin Powell did not appear when he became head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That's not how it happened.

You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do.

[Clyde Ross] was stationed in California. He found that he could go into stores without being bothered. He could walk the streets without being harassed. He could go into a restaurant and receive service.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market through means both legal and extralegal. Chicago whites employed every measure, from 'restrictive covenants' to bombings, to keep their neighborhoods segregated.

In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy.

When you write, you're inside the project. You can't really think about the reception. It has to be worth it even if no one reads it.