By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.

When I went to law school, nobody heard of civil rights.

I got the chance to argue my first case in Supreme Court, a criminal case arising in Alabama that involved the right of a defendant to counsel at a critical stage in a capital case before a trial.

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

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

There is no longer a single common impediment to blacks emerging in this society.

Living at the YMCA in Harlem dramatically broadened my view of the world.