Quotes from Yolanda King

When you see the commitment my parents exhibited... it was not for fame or fortune.

We've not reached the promised land. We're still wandering around, bumping into each other in the wilderness of ignorance and hate. That is why the King holiday is so important.

I wrote my first play when I was eight. It was about a queen, and I - of course! - was the queen.

Broadway musicals like 'Ain't Misbehavin',' 'Eubie' and 'Bubblin' Brown Sugar' depict blacks having a light, wonderful time and that was just not so for blacks in the '20s and '30s.

As soon as people heard me speak, they would compare me to my father. My siblings had the same kind of pressure.

In life, I had to be prim and proper and poised - The King Daughter. But acting, I could be the zany, silly, sometimes foolish person that I am. I could let the raw edges show.

To really involve yourself in transforming yourself. That's the work that I'm really focused on through my company, Higher Ground Productions, is really helping people to really find a place of personal empowerment as well as inner peace.

I found myself trying to be all things to all people. I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility and the pressure of expectation.

Really just about the only remembrance I have from when I was very young is the way Daddy used to place me on the refrigerator and then say, 'Jump!' and I'd jump into his arms. It was so much fun for me that even when I got too large for it to happen, I still wanted to do it anyway!

And you don't have to be a preacher to carry on. That's why I've gone into the theater, with my mother's blessings, and someday I may write, produce and act in my own story of daddy's life. There are so many sides to his story. I hope that someday I could get that opportunity.

The civil rights movement was not a mirage... It was live and in living color.

I have chosen to continue to promote 'we're one, the oneness of us,' and shine the spotlight, as my father did.

Black youth, in general, have no understanding of our past. Young black people who don't know who Martin Luther King Jr. was, don't know nothin'.

You see, for the most part it was a normal upbringing. Sure, there was the Nobel Peace award; sure, there were people coming to our house who I knew were famous. But we grew up in a very modest part of the community. Our last home was in what had been one of the worst ghettos in Atlanta.

Til I was about eight or nine, I had no awareness he was anybody special. Since all our friends were in the movement, I thought what Daddy did was natural. Everybody went to jail, right? Then, one day some kids at school called my daddy a jailbird, and it upset me. That was the beginning of my awareness.

Within the theater lies the power to stimulate and alter the hearts and minds of both the privileged and those who have too long been denied.

My father was bigger than life, an entity and everyone expected us, as his offspring, to be saintettes, these little carbon copies.

I struggled with a lot of the legacy for a long time, probably actually into my 30s before I really made peace with it.

Through the arts, you can impact upon people's attitudes, values, and understandings.

One of my main reasons for going to college is to try to get a liberal arts background.