The only authority my mother recognized was God's. God is love and the Bible is truth — everything else was up for debate. She taught me to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her.

I respected my father, but I loved my mother

My Great-grandfather was a Congregational Minister and my Mother was a Bible scholar, and I was brought up on the Bible, that the story of the Bible was conflict between the kings who had power, and the prophets who preached righteousness. And I was taught to believe in the prophets, got me into a lot of trouble. And my Dad said to me when I was young, "Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone, Dare to have a purpose firm, Dare to let it (be) known."

My mother spoke of Christ to my father, by her feminine and childlike virtues, and, after having borne his violence without a murmur or complaint, gained him at the close of his life to Christ.

Discipline was a major thing in our home, especially from my mum; she just didn’t take any nonsense. She was a loving person but liked people to be punctual, do whatever was assigned to them on time and without excuses. I think that must have rubbed off on my siblings and me.

The mother who taught me what I know of tenderness and love and compassion taught me also the bleak rituals of keeping Negroes in their 'place.' The father who rebuked me for an air of superiority toward schoolmates from the mill and rounded out his rebuke by gravely reminding me that 'all men are brothers,' trained me in the steel-rigid decorums I must demand of every colored male. They who so gravely taught me to split my body from my mind and both from my 'soul,' taught me also to split my conscience from my acts and Christianity from southern tradition.

I had a very strong mother and I learned from both my parents’ intellectual rigour, to have the courage of my convictions and to speak the truth.

I had a very good upbringing; my parents were very strict and loving as well as disciplinarians. My parents always stressed one point that everyone is equal to each other. I am a staunch Catholic member.

I was arguing with Father Sebastian the other day, she said thoughtfully. I quoted the thing about giving all you have to the poor. He said that was all very well but you had to come to terms with the Scriptures and realize there had to be teachers and leaders for the people's own good. It seemed an awful get-out to me, and I couldn't help saying so. I told him if the Church would sell half her altar plate she could buy shoes for everybody in the country, and a lot else besides; and that if the Pope would make a start in Rome I'd see about getting rid of a few job lots of furniture down in Corfe. I'm afraid he didn't take very kindly to it. I know it was wrong of me but he annoys me sometimes; he's so pious, and it seems to mean so very little. He'd walk miles in the snow to pray for a sick child, he's a very good man; but if there was more money about to start with, maybe the child wouldn't have been taken ill. It all seems so unnecessary....

I was surrounded by dance, music and religious chants, so it was that kind of a mood. Our family was very culturally-minded, especially my grandmother. She was also quite the disciplinarian. She made sure I practiced daily for hours.

MY DAD WAS A DEACON, and my mom taught Sunday school. I remember a stretch when I was young when we would go to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday evening. Still, we didn’t consider ourselves overly religious, just good people who believed in God and were involved in our church.

My mother was the personification of rectitude and gentleness. She did not know much about the ways of the world; innocent of the art of concealment, she would say what was in her mind. People loved her for open-heartedness. My father, an orthodox brahmin, never accepted gifts from the Sudras. He spent much of his time in worship and meditation, and in repeating God's name and chanting His glories. Whenever in his daily prayers he invoked the Goddess Gayatri, his chest flushed and tears rolled down his cheeks. He spent his leisure hours making garlands for the Family Deity, Raghuvir

Dad’s church required so little of me. It was easy to be a Christian. The only affirmative teachings I remember drawing from church were that I shouldn’t cheat on my wife and that I shouldn’t be afraid to preach the gospel to others. So I planned a life of monogamy and tried to convert other people, even my seventh-grade science teacher, who was Muslim.

I think our upbringing was very coloured by my parents' history, in particular my mother. She was somebody who, at the age of 16, was taken into the ghettos and, subsequently, the concentration camps. She spent most of her time in a camp in Poland