In '32 we organized the Young Negroes' Cooperative League and had some degree of success in terms of establishing stores and certainly buying clubs in various sections of the country. I was designated as - I don't know what exactly - I believe it was director. I'm not sure what it was, but it had to do with getting out the necessary mail and all of that - organization.

During the Depression years, I began to identify to some extent with the unemployed, the organization for the unemployed at that period.

I have always thought that what is needed is the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in developing leadership in others.

Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.

In order to see where we are going, we not only must remember where we have been, but we must understand where we have been.

I didn't have any close relationship with him because, although [William Edward Burghardt] DuBois may not have been as egocentric - I don't know - he certainly was not the easiest person to approach. I think, certainly, those of us who were younger sort of respected that in terms of his preoccupation with deep thoughts. So, I made no effort to establish any relationship with him. However, he was in and out then.

From the Cooperative League, I suppose, with the Depression lingering as long as it did, the next step in terms of, as you call it, professional relationship, was to go to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]. I went there as an assistant field secretary, and so forth. So, I suppose that was the first organized step.