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James V. Kimsey
Founding Chairman,
America Online
That night we got mortared, and we had tracers flying around, which was not an abnormal nocturnal experience for us. And, I remember sort of smugly saying to one of my team members I said, "Watch, those nuns are going to be back over here in the morning trying to have me get a helicopter and get them out of here." And sure enough, the next morning the little Mother Superior -- there was a Mother Superior, a nurse, a teacher and a cook -- came over and I said, "Yes, Sister, what can I do?" And she said, "Please follow me." And, she took me back to the orphanage and during the night she'd made up a punch list of all the deficiencies she's found with the orphanage. And, she took me around and showed me all these, a little crack here, little something over here, and the implication being that I had to fix them. And I thought to myself, "I think I really underestimated these nuns."
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B.B. King
King of the Blues
B.B. King: I had sang with this group, sang with two groups. The first one was called the Elk Horn -- like an elk's horn -- Jubilee Singers. That's where I started in Kilmichael and I thought we was pretty good, but then when I moved to the Delta that broke up the group, and I started to sing with another group called the St. John Gospel Singers. And, I would usually sing as a lead singer and I had started to play the guitar pretty good, so we was one of the few groups -- gospel groups -- that used the guitar. And, I thought we was good because we had sing-along programs with some of the great, great gospel singers. We was like an opening act, open shows for them and I personally thought we was pretty good. And, we would work our crops each year, and come harvest time we talked about leaving and going some place to record. Because there was no recording studios in the area, so we would have had to have gone to Greenwood, Greenville or to Memphis. And, I thought Memphis would be the best, because I had heard so much about Memphis and the things they was doing there. Each year for about three or four years we would talk about it, the guys and I, and every year one would say, "Well man, I didn't make but two or three bales of cotton. I don't have any money. I can't leave now." So, finally one day I said, "Well, I'm going to leave," and that's how I did it. I left and went to Memphis.
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B.B. King
King of the Blues
B.B. King: You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you. I have stage fright today, 78 years now. I had a lot of confidence that I could do it. I'd hear Professor Luther Henson again saying, "If you try and try, try harder." And I have worried quite often. People use --I don't know where it come from, but if you try, nothing beats a failure, but a try. And if you try and you don't make it, try and try again, and I believe that. I believe that today. I believe you -- sometimes you may not make that mark that you was trying to get this time, but suppose you had ate too much, drank too much water or whatever. You're just too heavy, try it the next time when you don't have so much food, when you haven't drank so much water, and that's, I think, the way I believe even now.
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Coretta Scott King
Pioneer of Civil Rights
As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was told, one way or another, almost every day of my life, that I wasn't as good as a white child. When I went to the movies with other black children, we had to sit in the balcony while the white kids got to sit in the better seats below. We had to walk to school while the white children rode in school buses paid for by our parents' taxes. Such messages, saying we were inferior, were a daily part of our lives. But I was blessed with parents who taught me not to let anyone make me feel like I wasn't good enough, and as my mother told me, "You are just as good as anyone else. You get an education and try to be somebody. Then you won't have to be kicked around by anybody, and you won't have to depend on anyone for your livelihood, not even a man."
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Coretta Scott King
Pioneer of Civil Rights
Coretta Scott King: I realized when Montgomery started that this was probably the reason we were called to Montgomery. After my house was bombed, and of course, all the threats on my husband's life, on my life too. I realized I could have been killed as well -- because I was in the house when the bomb hit the front porch -- with my young baby. And the callers had been calling, and they said that they were going to bomb our house, told my husband they were going to bomb his house and kill his family if he didn't leave town in three days. And of course he didn't leave town in three days, and they did bomb the house. So knowing that they meant what they said, because they actually did bomb the house -- the bomb was not strong enough to destroy the house, but if it had been, then that would have been very, very sad for all of us, certainly for me and my baby and my husband. But the fact is that I had to deal with the fact that if I continued in the struggle, I too could be killed, and that's when I started praying very seriously about my commitment and whether or not I would be able to stick with my husband to continue in the struggle. And of course it wasn't that difficult. It was a struggle, but I knew that we were doing the right thing. I always felt that what was happening in Montgomery was part of God's will and purpose, and we were put there to be in the forefront of that struggle, and it wasn't just a struggle relegated to Montgomery, Alabama or the South, but that it had worldwide implications. And I felt, really, a sense of fulfillment that I hadn't felt before, that this was really what I was supposed to be doing, and it was a great blessing to have discovered this, and to be doing what was God's will for your life.
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