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very hard to be -- to seem involved and serious and interested, because I think most of the things that came before us for decisions were kind of petty.

I remember writing a note to my predecessor, George Albee, just before I had to take over and preside, and said, “George, you've got to teach me how to seem as interested as you seem in this.”

He laughed and said, “You'll get used to it, “and I guess I did.

I enjoyed the recognition. And it would be -- you know, it would be sheer pretense for me to tell you anything other than that. It was the fact that my colleagues were able to elect me president -- interestingly enough, not for my color so much, but because of where I stood in social psychology. I stood as one of the people who believed that psychology, and particularly social psychology, should be harnessed to social change, social policy, etc.

Well, that's not a particularly fashionable position, you know, particularly for a discipline that is struggling desperately for status and prestige and acceptance as a pure science, or something like that, and I knew that.

And if anyone had said to me, “Kenneth, you're going to be elected president of the American Psychological Association some day, “I'd have said, “You're crazy.” Or “wishful thinking,” or “You're letting your racial sentimentalism get away with you.”

But I guess in the sixties, in the late sixties, something happened to psychology and psychologists that probably would not have