Yes. In some sense blacks have always been ready but in another sense I
used to say sometime, I don't want to defend it at this moment. Another
discussion I had with a friend of mine a long time ago I made the
apperception, I said, "blacks have never been mousetrapped."
Let me go back to make a comment on your point. The difference maker in
these situations have been young whites who represent a different
generation and a different design for capitalizing. Capitalizing means
making money and achieving power politically. The unsung person here as
a catalyst, Morris Abrams, extraordinarily important in this context.
This coming together in Atlanta of Morris Abrams, John Harrell, Harry
Ashmore, Phil Hammer. What did Morris stress? Money, housing—there's
money to be made in housing—but if you make money in the housing you
also need to think in terms of power of politics, one man, one vote.
Morris is complex—he ain't no flaming liberal. He's one of the most
sensitive guys. I've seen friends who
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made him cry because his pride was . . . The thing that prevents Morris
from being a really great person is a kind of sense that his pride gets
wounded and that effects his . . . Well, that's another story. I think
that in the Atlanta context he's perfect as a kind of a catalyst there.
I think if you look at other settings too, where there are those who
combine a sense, I use the word capitalize. The economics that relates
to the housing or relates to the jobs, or commerce, these kinds of
combinings made for a sense of possibilities and so on. So, I think,
Atlanta represents interrelatedness. Atlanta is one of the most
confusing and confounded things in terms of its political lives and how
they were tackled and how the answers to them made for very important
developments. I think if you look at a Morris Abrams, and if you look at
a Rufus Clement and you say, "what do they want in what context, and
what does Atlanta have to offer?" My comment, my observation is that it
has worked best. You say, "why?" It's interesting to compare Atlanta and
Birmingham—I think that the side doors in Atlanta which you had people
to come in and out of.