from "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

"On Post Street, where our house was, the hill skidded slowly down to Fillmore, the market heart of our district. In two short blocks before it reached its destination, the street housed two day-and-night restaurants, two gambling houses, plus diners, shoe-shine shops, beauty salons, barber shops and at least four churches. To full grasp the never-ending activity in San Francisco's Negro neighborhood during the war, one need only know that the two blocks described were side street that were duplicated many times over in the eight-to-ten-square-block area."

Maya Angelou, Poet Laureate of the United States of America