When I was 15, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. No one thought this was a good idea

In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.

I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.

We Americans entered a new phase in our history - the era of integration - in 1954.

A Negro who does not vote is ungrateful to those who have already died in the fight for freedom. ... Any person who does not vote is failing to serve the cause of freedom - his own freedom, his people's freedom, and his country's freedom.

New Orleans may well have been the most liberal Deep South city in 1954 because of its large Creole population, the influence of the French, and its cosmopolitan atmosphere.

My father kept his distance from working-class American blacks.