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Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst.

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.

During my childhood, Washington was a segregated city, and I lived in the midst of a poor black neighborhood. Life on the streets was often perilous. Indoor reading was my refuge, and twice a week, I made the hazardous bicycle trek to the central library at Seventh and K streets to stock up on supplies.

I didn't come to Washington to be part of the problem.

When you were growing up in the 30s, 20s, of course the 40s, all black people at least in the Washington, D.C., area were required to live among themselves.

I can think of no one that my grandparents knew, that told me stories and that I experienced myself, had any sense of social inferiority growing up in segregated Washington. None whatsoever.

The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges.

I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.

In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.