I never saw a true representation - an iconic hero - for myself. It just got boring, reading about all these really powerful and heroic white guys.

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• Salim Akil:

  To me, Jefferson Pierce represented every side of me. I knew that I would be able to flesh him out.

• Salim Akil:

  If I'm walking down the street or taking my kids trick-or-treating, and I see some young girls or b

• Salim Akil:

  As an artist, I write and I do what I know and what creatively comes out of me, and I think that ot

• Salim Akil:

  If anyone sees anything in 'Black Lightning' that seems foreign to them, then they haven't been pay

• Salim Akil:

  I know and understand the result of extreme violence in my own life, in my friends' lives, and so I

• Salim Akil:

  I don't think I'll ever do a show with violence where there's no consequences, 'cause I know the co

• Salim Akil:

  I've worked in a mortuary and seen the consequences of what guns and knives do to people.

• Salim Akil:

  Jefferson Pierce is the epitome of what black men are: He loves his wife, his children, and the com

• Salim Akil:

  Black folk have been 'the other' in shows and movies and in life for quite a long time. Not from ou

• Salim Akil:

  Black Lightning, Jefferson Pierce, Thunder, and Lightning deserve their own show because they are n