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I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights.

Segregation, in a sense, helped create and maintain black solidarity.

Respectfully, the civil rights movement for people with disabilities is modeled on the African American civil rights movement. I'm old enough to remember 1964. I was a junior in high school.

Segregation was a burden for many blacks, because the end of the civil war and the amendments added to the constitution elevated expectations beyond reality in some respects.

The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.

As a matter of history, the Fourteenth Amendment was not understood to ban segregation on the basis of race.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

Ninety years after slavery, blacks were still segregated from whites. They still had separate drinking fountains, separate restrooms, separate neighborhoods, and separate schools. They still were expected to sit at the back of the bus.

After Civil Rights, it was very awkward for whites and blacks. We didn't know how to talk to each other.

The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.