You can't segregate and humiliate people decade after decade without creating long-lasting injuries.

I know this might be broadcast broadly. But I'm 52 years old, and I'm going to admit to you that I've never had a drop of alcohol.

We've done a very poor job at really reflecting on our legacy of racial inequality... You see it in the South, but it's everywhere.

I grew up in a segregated community: I couldn't go to the public schools, beaches, certain parts of town.

I grew up in the country in the rural South, and I have a brother a year older than me and a sister a year younger.

Obviously, there were ways to have made a lot more money and to have had more leisure. But I wouldn't choose that. I feel rich in ways that are unique and that I would never trade for tens of millions of dollars in the bank.

If we had done the work that we should have done in the 20th century to combat our history of racial inequality, no one could win national office after demonizing people because they're Mexican or Muslim. We would be in a place where we would find that unacceptable.

There was never a time you could get the majority of people in Alabama or Mississippi, or even southern Delaware, to vote to end segregation. What changed things was the rule of law, the courts. Brown v. Board of Education was ushered in by a movement, but it was a legal decision.

It is unevolved to want to celebrate the architects and defenders of slavery.

You can't understand what happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, you can't understand what happened to Eric Garner in New York City, without understanding this narrative of racial difference that was created during the slave years.