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at emancipation who set about to raise families and make a living without, for the most part, skills, money, and land. We had survived reconstruction, Jim Crow, Lynch Law, disenfranchisement, discrimination, and segregation. Survived several depressions, two great wars, and the witch hunts of the McCarthy era. We had survived--although some of us didn't recognize his symptoms in time to prevent a national disgrace--the "Checkers" speech of the man who this year proclaimed himself a "paranoid for peace" and claimed his prize of $600,000 on the television spectacle, "Deface the Nation."

Through it all, we had struggled to climb out of degradation, poverty, illiteracy; to get--and keep--a decent job,