Chicago '68 was a relatively small demonstration for its time, but I've talked to millions of people who claim they were there because it felt like we were all there. Everyone from our generation was there and was at Woodstock.

I don't know that I ever bought into the "American dream." I was a child of privilege. I grew up in the '50s and it was a quiet time in America, at least on the surface and I grew up in a kind of feathery bed of privilege.

I'd been arrested many times by then. I'd been an organizer, so many things had changed over those three years [from 1965 till 1968].

His [Martin Luther King] last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, is a direct reference to angles, barbarism or socialism.

When you go into a college of education you've got aspirations of making a difference in people's lives, of loving children, of working with kids, but none of that is affirmed in your college of education. Then you go working in schools, especially in places like New York City and Chicago that I'm most familiar with, and you find these huge aspirations are beaten out of you in a very systematic way - and still people persevere.

I knew Barack Obama, absolutely. And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans.

Nixon probably was a nice guy.