Where I went to school, even though they didn't teach Black history, there were certain names that came up from time to time, despite the fact that you couldn't go to a book and find anything. Ralph Bunche was one of those names that came up when I was a little kid.

We had to do an assignment on the Nobel prize. So, what is the Nobel prize, and have Black people gotten it? And during our course of research, we found there was only one Black person during that time who had received it, and he had gone to school here in Los Angeles (UCLA). The research taught me and my classmates that Blacks could excel in America.