"Two weeks before I was ready to graduate high school, I got into serious trouble; I was taken before a judge and given two choices: enlist in the military or go to jail. Well, I didn’t know what the military was all about, but I had a pretty…

"We had a very small apartment in the section of New York called Sunnyside in Queens. Where [my mother] worked, the textile company was in Manhattan, so she would leave the house at 7 or 7:15 in the morning, catch the subway which was a block…

“Every public place, theater, restaurant, had the same signs on them. Jews were segregated completely, cause after I was kicked out of school later on, a year later, about six months later, I went to a segregated school. There were—they…

“I graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1937. That particular high school was founded in 1924 with Professor Charles L. Harper as the principal. And he remained principal for – oh, I think it was about 20 years or more. But it was the…

“When I graduated from high school, my father’s oldest sister talked to my father and said, ‘You know, you haven’t been a part of your child’s life very much, and she obviously wants to do something with her life. Would you be willing to finance her…