Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.

When I was in school, all our history books were American, so we learned American history, not Canadian history.

To be in the history books of anything is fantastic,

So when I read this story, it unlocked a volcano of unanswered questions, because the questions had never been asked. It was an opportunity to come to terms with the lot of repressed history - and history of repression.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

Old books exert a strange fascination for me -- their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt.