Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.
During World War II, hundreds of thousands of people actually - and among them many African-American - migrated to the Hampton Roads area because of the job boom that was happening. It was a place where you could get stable war jobs.
Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.
Anyone reading contemporary poetry - especially contemporary African-American poetry - will quickly see that race is an enduring subject. What some don't realize is just how diverse the handling of that subject is. It's as diverse as blackness.
Are things getting better with each generation? Yes. It's quite interesting to be living in these times, for me to witness an African-American being elected president. It's quite extraordinary.
I started to think of 'Hidden Figures' as the first part of a mid-century African-American trilogy.
You gotta understand, my great-grandfather was German and Irish. My grandmother was Indian, and my grandfather was African-American, so we all got a little something in us.
The African-American experience is one of the most important threads in the American tapestry.
I had very supportive parents that made the way for me, even at a time when there were very few women - no women, really; maybe two or three women - and very few, fewer than that, African-American women heading in this direction, so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.
Andrew Warren was a rarity in the CIA's Clandestine Service - African-American, fluent in Arabic, and relatively young for an agent who'd already spent nearly a decade chasing terrorists in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq and Algeria, so deep undercover that few of his friends or family knew the nature of his work.
More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock. That means absent fathers.
You know Latin people? African-American people? How our skin ages more slowly? Even though we're dramatic, we move our faces, we eat higher-fat foods, we're the ones with fewer wrinkles - it makes you wonder.
My plays aren't stylistically the same. Just being an African-American woman playwright on Broadway is experimental.
We have signed an exclusive licensing agreement with a company called TurnerPatterson, another African-American company, and what I thought would be a great vehicle for 'Ebony,' since it is such a strong brand name with tremendous loyalty, is to grow that brand name even more across different areas.
African-American music tends to have, at the very least, a glimmer of hope to it - sometimes full-fledged hope.
It's an honor to be a part of Magic Shave as their new ambassador. One of the problems that some African-American men have with shaving is razor bumps. Magic Shave is perfect because once you eliminate the razor, you eliminate the bumps, and it's so easy to use.
I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.
My mom was the first African-American woman to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School, in 1946. She had leadership roles in the law, in government and the corporate world. She was a great role model in that she felt anything was possible.
I'd be happy if people said that I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music.
I knew that there were several, among African-American leaders, who had been put out by me because of my failure or reluctance to endorse Sen. Kerry.
Being black, I'm involved in the reparations movement. It's focused toward the African-American audience. We could begin to heal.
I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.
Since Bush has been in office, African-American women have fallen behind in terms of income and wages.
If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him. You take a look!
The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community.
I hate white people writing for black people; it's so offensive. So we go out and look specifically for African-American voices.
Look - I'm an African-American. I'm black. But I'm just looking at the character and trying to find his soul, his energy. If you can wipe away the blanket of skin and flesh that people tend to see, and look inside for the essence of the soul, then that's the work I'm doing. That's the work I always do.
I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.
I think, though, as African-American women, we are always trained to value our community even at the expense of ourselves, and so we attempt to protect the African-American community.
It's unfortunate that a lot of people think African-American female artists are monolithically R&B this-or-that, don't have to do anything by default.
I'm very optimistic about the future, because... Okay, with Audra McDonald, even just on Broadway, they cast her in shows that are usually not played by African-American women, so she's very inspiring to me just because of that, you know what I mean?
I think a lot of African-American kids don't have fathers to teach them how to dress, so you end up being taught by pictures in magazine and movies. You see cowboys, Indians, old Hollywood films, Cary Grant. It has an effect on you.
The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.
I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It's the foundation of rock and roll.
There was a lot of feeling that with an African-American president, life on the South Side of Chicago would be radically different.
Culture is about humanizing people. You look at the African-American civil rights movement, you look at the LGBT rights movement - the culture changed before the politics did.