Give light, and people will find the way...

I think you can find some rationales for that if we look at the background out of which he came. Martin [Luther King] had come out of a highly competitive, black, middle-class background.

Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it.

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

Martin [Luther King] wasn't one to buck forces too much.

In your short stay in Atlanta, I'm sure you saw that there was great competition between Martin's [Luther King] father and John Wesley Dobbs in terms of family status. You know, the bragging about whose child got a master's degree first and whose child, maybe, was the first Ph.D. Out of a background like that, the business of becoming a chairman of an important movement or a movement that symbolizes a certain amount of prestige is something you don't resist easily.

You didn't see me on television, you didn't see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders.