Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing.

These events are swirling around them. In the white community, people felt like they had no control over their neighborhoods, their destiny. In the black community, centuries of government and economic forces were pushing on them. I went in with a kind of arrogance, maybe, that came from living in a very intellectual family, and I left knowing that there was a lot about the way people lived that I didn't know about.

Never underestimate a man's ability to underestimate a woman.

My parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.

Sisters in Crime now has more than 4,000 members worldwide.

Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing. I answered an ad that the Presbyterian Church of Chicago put up on college campuses. I was at the University of Kansas, and it's somewhat relevant to my life and work that I'm a Jew. But they weren't doing a religious litmus test. They wanted energetic, civil-rights-committed college students to come help them run some summer programs.

I'm lucky in having found the perfect partner to spend my life with