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deputy police commissioner. I think he might have been the first black in such a position, and they were probably gunning for him anyway, because it was clear to me that police departments are kind of considered ethnic reserves, at least for top positions, up to that time, and still in most places, for Irish Catholics, and Bob Mangum was probably seen as an interloper, you know -- someone who just shouldn't have been there in the first place.

This is a minor thing, but it was made into a major scandal, and Bob had to resign.

So what we did was to invite Bob to this Group that he had not been a part of before, and the first evening he came, we decided that what was really needed in New York, great cosmopolitan city, was the organization of a larger number of blacks who were concerned with protecting the flanks of blacks who were being put into official and exposed positions for the first time; that we just couldn't permit them to be out there alone, and suffering, you know, the kind of attacks in isolation that Bob Mangum was subjected to. And this Group had to be an influential group. It had to be intelligent. It had to be selective. And compatible, of course.

At the time, we had in mind no more than 20 or 25, and we took upon ourselves the, maybe presumptious, role of selecting who these would be, and determining what the methods were going to be.

But interestingly enough, the original Group under Ben did not want to take the front and center position in the new Group which it wanted to form. No one of us wanted to be the public leader of this Group. Certainly Ben didn't. That was certainly not his style.