I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing

In the early months of World War II, San Francisco's Fillmore district experienced a visible change. The Asian population disappeared. As the Japanese left, soundlessly and without protest, the Negroes entered. Japanese shops were taken over by Negro businessmen, and in less than a year became permanent homes for the newly arrived Southern Blacks

a mystery that young Southern Black boys start to solve, try to solve, from the time they're seven years old until their death. The humorless puzzle of inequality and hate

Owens and Louis were great Black heroes, but what school official in the white-kingdom of Little Rock had the right to decide that those two men must be our only heroes?

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was terrible to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead.

The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even included) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.

whether she was cowardly or not, she would have said that she believed in reality

to be feared, and in that fear was included the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the employer, and the poorly dressed against the well dressed.