he decade of the '60's would provide my father with some of his highest highs and his lowest lows. It was a roller coaster decade. For most of it he would be in his 60's.

In the early '60's, heroic challenges to segregation in the South were part of the push for dramatic change that was firming the resolve and shortening the patience of black people throughout the country.

In the latter part of the '60's that shortened patience would change the philosophy of many blacks from the passive resistance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the "Burn, Baby, Burn!" militancy of H. Rap Brown, Stokeley Carmichael and others. Smoldering anger ignited race riots—looting and burning—in black ghettos across the country.

In 1961, my father addressed B'nai Brith in a speech entitled, "Dixie Sit-Down Strikes." He spoke about the emerging attitude of black youth, symbolized by the actions of four Negro college students who sat together at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, NC, waiting to be served and refusing to leave until they were arrested.

"Negro youth," he told the assemblage, "have been told they are different but they refuse to be brain washed."

He added, "Education has changed them. As one of them said, 'I have just been educated out of the ability to adjust to the Southern way of life.' They are less fearful and more impatient. To the white man's charge to 'go slow,' they retort, 'We've been going slow for 96 years—ever since Emancipation—how much slower can we go?'"

He was ready to push as hard as he could in as many ways as he could to bring about positive change for black people.

In 1962, he was the moving force in getting a branch of the National Urban League in New Haven. Despite some initial difficulties, he was able to get a pledge of $27,000 in start up money from local businesses.

In 1964, with a grant proposal in hand, he approached Community Progress Incorporated (CPI), an agency set up in New Haven during the early '60's by the Ford Foundation. Their mission was to complement the physical renewal of economicaly depressed New Haven neighborhoods by assisting in what was then called "human renewal." He obtained an $18,000 grant to open a store-front center, The Union of Indigent Persons (UIP), for recovering alcoholics. The grant was for a year, with an option to renew. He collaborated in this effort with Mr. Ed Grant, who, like my father, was actively involved in the Dixwell Community. Mr. Grant agreed to run UIP, and my father helped him obtain training to do so at the Rutgers School of Alcohol Studies.