Strong people do not need strong leaders.

I had been friendly with people who were in the Communist party and all the rest of the Left forces, which were oriented in the direction of mass action.

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.

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.

Unless you had developed a certain independence of value, a certain independent system of value, a system of values that was independent from this middle-class drive for recognition. This has been my explanation of part of [Martin Luther King] general role. So, he accepted this without too much resistance. In fact, none that I could ever see, and at certain points I was close enough to see something.

I'm sure, out of the context here of Stanley Levison's relationship with the Jewish liberal forces, that had made contributions. I remember one such contribution before they moved from Montgomery. An associate in the real estate business with Stanley had lost a son in the war, and she wanted to do something in memory of him. So, she made available certain monies to be used by the emerging leadership there in Montgomery. I'm sure other individuals did.

My association with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is sort of predated by an effort that we were a part of here in New York City regarding the reaction to this 1954 Supreme Court [Brown v Board of Education] decision.