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In every era going back to Lincoln with Frederick Douglass, presidents talk to those that were leading at that time.

The late Roy Jenkins was both a mentor and a personal friend. He was a man of both phenomenal intellect and political achievement in equal measure.

I couldn't say no to A. Philip Randolph and no to Martin Luther King, Jr. These two men, I loved them, I admired them, and they were my heroes.

Frederick Douglass had to teach himself how to read before standing up to defeat slavery.

Dad was a great advocate for social justice and a very quiet advocate of the essential Labor values.

Robert Johnson? No, I didn't know him, personally.

I am one of maybe three people in the world who knows anything about Robert W. Chambers.

What I would like to be remembered for is that Walter Washington changed the spirit of the people of this city, that he came in as mayor when there was hate and greed and misunderstanding among our people and the races were polarized.

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

Bill Phillips was this nervous, chain-smoking student. He had signed up to be an engineer, he had gone away to fight in the Second World War, he had come back. He had switched to sociology because he wanted to understand how people could do these terrible things to each other. And he did a little bit of economics on the side.