"Autobiography [is] self-empowering self-definition–a power that autobiography…continues to grant countless disenfranchised, formerly invisible, socially stigmatized people."

Linda Frost, Conjoined Twins in Black and White

"A good memoir is…a work of history, catching a distinctive moment in the life of both a person and a society."

William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir

"My mind kept racing back over the countless stories about Ku Klux Klan treatment of black people, stories that every black person knows by the time he or she is five years old. By the time you were sixteen, you were well versed in what a 'nigger' was in America."

James Cameron, A Time of Terror, Chapter 7

"The atrocity of lynching has left an indelible mark on American life."

W. Fitzhugh Brundage in Lynching in the New South

"Those [jailers] crying over my misfortune were the first white people…who really seemed to care. [Their tears], stamped upon my heart, a special source of moral strength for my soul during trying times."

James Cameron, A Time of Terror, Chapter 10

"In 1930 I became sick with hatred. Hatred is a disease that eats into the core of the whole body and destroys it from within. But if you have love in your heart, you can blossom as the sun shines every day."

James Cameron in his last interview, May 2006.

"It's the most important thing in the world to me to carry on this fight, to explain the history that's been hidden….I wonder if God saved me for this."

James Cameron, Speech before the U.S. Senate, 2005