Put the strong, masculine figure in a school with tough kids and you have a certain control. It's very demeaning to the kids and very demeaning to the tough, black guy, but that's how they worked it.

You've got to learn to handle the press because god knows the government does all the time.

I think people are afraid. I remember when we'd have discussions in the '60s among people who were active. We'd say, "Well, people are afraid," and the answer to us was, "If you're afraid, you know you should be doing something." People are afraid today, but they're not doing anything.

I got a job as a children's librarian at PS 175 in Harlem, and that changed everything. That was an epiphany. I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles.

I would never take a case that had to do with abusing children. They're the true innocents.

I feel for young people today. When I came out of law school, yes, we were broke, we had kids, we had problems. But it was straightforward. I didn't have to say, "My God, I am $80,000 in debt, I have to get a job, I have to pay it back, my life is ruined otherwise." We were able to go forward and work toward building something new, and that's what we did. Today many lawyers are unable to feel free to be advocates.

Today, it's not the same playing field as when I first became a lawyer in 1977, where the government had been restricted by our wonderful Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren's court rulings. Now it's all going the other way, the flow is against the defendant, against anything that could really help a client. But you still fight it, you do what you can do. It's all there is.