In concluding his retrospective on One Dixwell Plaza, he wrote:

"The attitude of the immediate community disturbs me. Black people often complain that they have no decent place to live….

"The people in and around (the building) defaced and even at times defiled it. Perhaps, one day, the concept of physical cleanliness and order will develop in the ghettos—and I am not talking only about black ghettos.

"How do you explain this attitude? I don't know for sure. I do know there is still some under the surface anger in the black community …. Perhaps this insult to buildings and things in their community is an expression of it. Sort of a personal riot … of one's own.

One Dixwell Plaza awaiting demolition in September 1999

"How do I feel about the whole thing? …. I am frustrated and particularly upset about HUD's performance. I made the effort. And I think people have to continue to make "the effort." Hopefully, they can benefit from a better and more sincere performance from the powers who have in their hands the tools to make such a venture a success."

My father did not detach himself from the black community, despite his frustration with those members who helped destroy his dream for One Dixwell Plaza.

In a speech about the responsibility of black doctors to their communities—delivered to the Association of Former Interns and Residents of Freedmen's Hospital at Howard University in April 1970—he had concluded:

"Despite the attitude of some lower-income blacks to us, their middle-income counterpart, they need us. They cannot do it alone.

"And neither can we. For as surely as we rest serenely in the back waters of the racial pond, if the ghetto blacks go over the dam to repression and limited opportunity, we, too, will go over the dam."

FUNTUMMIREKU- DENKYEMMIREK Two-headed crocodile with the same stomach. The need for unity where people share one destiny.