The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.
Katherine Dunham

You know, this isn't theatre like it used to be.
Katherine Dunham

A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.
Katherine Dunham

I used to want the words "She tried" on my tombstone. Now I want "She did it."
Katherine Dunham

Black people should have recognition for themselves and their backgrounds and their relationships with other people in the world and thus lose some of their alienation. This museum has certainly stood for that in this town.
Katherine Dunham

Aside from a few master teachers that we have had over the years, this has been a completely local talent development. But people have started to come now from Chicago, we have a number of students from Chicago and different places of the country and even in the world.
Katherine Dunham

I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing for other people.
Katherine Dunham

I certainly feel my career was a great career because it inspired so many many people, literally hundreds of people to follow a new kind of life and to realize that they could make out and advance their own professional and private and social lives.
Katherine Dunham