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We had gardner and some of the other senior members of the department as models, and as people who themselves contributed, you know, and who seemed secure as professionals, and didn't need to resort to petty things in their relationships among themselves and with the younger ones.

That was the context within which each of us could sort of be ourselves, you know. Pursue our professional interests, relate to our students, go to the seminars with the students, and enjoy arguing with them, raising questions, etc.

So that was -- that's what I recall about my first eight, ten years at the College. And it was in that context that, when the lawyers of the NAACP came to me in 1951 and told me about what they planned in regard to challenging laws requiring or permitting segregated schools -- looking back on that period, it never occurred to me that if I were to join with the lawyers, that I would have any problems with regard to the College or the department.

This is an interesting and important point, I think. When Bob (Robert) Carter told me that Otto Kleinberg had told him that I had materials on the detrimental effects of racial segregation on personality development of children, and he told me that the lawyers were going to challenge segregated schools in the federal courts, he asked me, did I have any materials that would be related to the problem of the damage which segregation did to human beings?

I told him about the report. Otto knew about the report because Otto Kleinberg was on the advisory committee of the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth. And Alaine Locke