In the decades since my youth, I've witnessed the explosion of fatherless families and an exponential increase in illiteracy and crime.

We understood, growing up - 'cause it was taught in our family home, my mom and dad - to respect women, for instance. To respect yourself. That you respect your name. Those are the kind of things we were taught.

It was the understanding of the power of perception that allowed the Martin Luther King, Jr. generations to stay true to the strategy of non-violence, refusing to retaliate when every emotional instinct would justify them doing so.

One of these days, I'm going to stop learning through my errors.

During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed.

The death penalty confronts us with a penetrating moral question: Can even the monstrous crimes of those who are condemned to death and are truly guilty of such crimes erase their sacred dignity as human beings and their intrinsic right to life?

The campaign against the death penalty has been - while a powerful campaign, its participants have been those who attend all of the vigils, a relatively small number of people.

If we don't know life, how can we know death?