“For both black and white, there is a pride in the fact that Atlanta has long been an oasis of relative political enlightenment sur­rounded by the redneck mandates of the rest of the state”

“If history is benevolent, the wounds suffered from within and with­out, from the worst of colonial history and contemporary African corrup­tion, greed, and gangster politics, will all someday become no more than the ritual scars of an initiation into world status”

“Jackson has inspired debate over his cosmetic decisions because the residue of the ’60s black nationalism and the condescension of those who would pity or mock black Americans have met over the issue of his face, his skin tone, his hair”

“The wimp who would save the world, Bernhard Goetz is transformed with a few bullets into Clark Kent, the mild­-mannered bachelor ready to shoot a mugger before he makes a single bound.”

“Without a doubt, Armstrong was the greatest trumpet player of the century — the most powerful, the most touching, the most varied”

“Baldwin was the first of his kind, and perhaps the last we shall see for some time: the Negro writer made a celebrity and thrust into the na­tional political dialogue.”

“What seems to be about to happen is what LeRoi Jones called Unity Music in 1966. It will include the entire range of black music, maybe in one long performance, but pivoting on the drums.”

Thirty years ago “Do the Right Thing” was already controversial — four Voice writers wrote their own things.

Though it seemed at first only a fanatical cult committed to a bizarre version of Islam, Elijah Muhammad’s homemade Nation was far from an aberration.