I always - I knew from day one , in college, that I wanted to be a teacher .But I don't think I had envisioned becoming a professor at the time. I remained a history major until 1951.

I remember an experience once of a young man in our home who was gay. We just assumed it, based on his outward appearance. Gay people had a hard time in those days, in fifties since the police would create situations to lock them up.

James Porter said to me once, when I was talking about painting, he said, well, that's fine, he said, but you have a good mind so you can't just be a painter; you're going to have to help define the field and keep the tradition going. And he meant walking in his footsteps in a certain way.

That emphasis, from my parents, was always, "if you want something different from this" - they didn't say "better than this," because I'm not sure that they knew anything better, "then get an education."

I hadn't had any course work in ceramics. I had no courses in art education but I wasn't going to let this chance to have a job pass me by. I went out and learned and I stayed one step ahead of the students by reading and I got to be pretty proficient at throwing on the wheel and making my own glazes, ordering the chemicals and having the students go out and dig and process their clay, and doing things that they weren't teaching at Howard University. So Talladega College opened up my whole sensibility about experimental teaching.

There was no real gender definition in the sense of how you treat people in those days with gender differences. You avoided them. My parents always told me that you do not make fun of anybody, and so I didn't see anything funny about it.

In 1951 I took my first art course. And one day I looked over my shoulder and there was this tall gentleman standing, very well-dressed and groomed, and he asked, "What is your name? I don't know you. What is your major?" I said history. And he looked at my drawing and looked at me and said, "You don't belong over there; you belong here." He was James A. Porter.