I’ve always been involved in politics. And I guess it goes all the way back to my school career and education. I, in the 1960s was a product of school segregation, where we took our schools and completely disbanded them, and made racial equality. Fifty-Fifty. And the kids had no choices. They closed Booker T. Washington, Blease, down here. A pretty good school. Closed it and sent the students to A. C. Flora, across town. And they did it over the summer because the laws had been changed by the politicians. And, the day that school opened, we were on CBS news with the busses turned upside down, and one of them lit on fire. By folks who didn’t want to go to school there. Not folks who did.

The end of that story was, I was standing in a bathroom in public school... This scar over here [pointing to his forehead] was from a baseball bat. I will tell you it was a pretty harsh environment. Government reached into my life and grabbed me and shook me at the age of fifteen. I remember how blatant it was that government just thought that they knew better, that government just thought they knew better what to do in my school.