The anniversary of the Montgomery boycott was being celebrated, and the handbill that was out, and all whatever literature that was circulated, didn't say practically anything about movement or what the movement stood for, what it had done, or anything, but was simply adulation of the leader, you know, [Martin Luther] King.

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.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

I was born in Norfolk, Virginia. I began school there, the first year of public school. When I was 7, the family shifted back to North Carolina. I grew up in North Carolina; had my schooling through the college level in North Carolina.

[Martin Luther] King was one of the two young ministers - and you know how directly oriented the Negro community still is towards the minister as the leader.

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

One of the stories that dominates our family literature was the fact that my maternal grandfather contracted for - I don't know under what terms - but, for a large section of the old slave plantation. He established himself - sisters and brothers, cousins, etc. on fifty- and sixty-acre plots.