You can read this quote from the book Giant Steps: The Autobiography of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1983), and others by Abdul-Jabbar, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read more of The Root’s coverage of Abdul-Jabbar here.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief ofThe Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.