(1/3) “I grew up in segregated Suffolk, Virginia in the 1950’s....

(1/3) “I grew up in segregated Suffolk, Virginia in the 1950’s.  My elementary school had two rooms, two black teachers, and six grades.  I could never go downtown and shop in the stores.  I could never go to the movies.  I could never swim in the local swimming pool.  But we never cared about that stuff because we had a creek behind our house, and we didn’t have money for movies anyway.  My mother never let us accept the fact that we were poor.  There were seven of us, but we always wore shoes, not sneakers.  Mom wasn’t exactly the ‘lovey-dovey’ type.  She never used a switch on us, but she loved to use an example.  Every action in our house had an equal and opposite reaction.  In 1964 the World’s Fair came to town, and my high school band was invited to give a concert for the governor.  My mother gave me money to take my uniform to the cleaners.  But I never did it.  And she never let me go to that concert.  Before she died I drove her to the hospital, and I told her: ‘I’m still mad at you for not letting me go to the World’s Fair.’  She didn’t answer me, but she had this gleam in her eye that said: ‘You learned your lesson.’  And she’s right.  Those examples made me the man I am today.  I’ve literally done everything I wanted to do as a kid.  I may not have been to the World’s Fair, but I’ve been to Ghana.  I’ve been to the Caribbean.  I’ve travelled all over the world.”