Who is the greater man - the man who cries, broken by anguish, or his scoffing, mocking, jeering oppressor? - Bessie Emery Head

There seemed to be ancient, ancestral lines drawn around the African man which defined his loyalties, responsibilities, and even the duration of his smile.

Things wouldn’t have been so bad if black men as a whole had not accepted their oppression and added to it with their own taboos and traditions.

I was born on the sixty of July, 1937, in the Pietermaritzburg Mental Hospital, in South Africa. The reason for my peculiar birthplaces was that my mother was white, and she had acquired me from a black man. She was judged insane, and committed to the mental hospital while pregnant. Her name was Bessie Emery and I consider it the only honor South African officials ever did me—naming me after this unknown, lovely, and unpredictable woman."