[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.

[Walter White] had keep [people] waiting while you got the impression that he was terribly busy with calls to Washington. I've seen such exhibitions in that direction as having someone come out of his office to the switchboard operator - which at that time was sort of located in the center of wherever people were waiting - and ask to call such-and-such a place, or a call through to Mr. So-and-so, or somebody like this, you see.

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.

I had known, number one, that there would never be any role for me in the leadership capacity with SCLC. Why? First, I'm a woman. Also, I'm not a minister. And second, I am a person that feels that I have to maintain some degree of personal integrity and be my own barometer of what is important and what is not.

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.

The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence.

This In Friendship - out of it came certain connections with the liberal labor establishment. Among the personalities that were involved were Bayard Rustin and a person from the American Jewish Congress, Stanley Levinson.