It's April, graduation is just down the road. What do I do ?"
Remember, this was 1969. This is when colleges had felt that the initial mission to integrate the schools.
And remember, there were 100 cities burning every year, between 1964 and 1969, and people felt really fairly confident in doing radical things.
He, the the professor, his name was Eugene Sparrows, to whom this book dedicated, got a piece of paper out of his pocket and wrote down the admission director's name and he said, "call this man, and tell him I told you to call."
I called. had a long, hour-long interview, in which I sat on my hands very nervously, and I was accepted to college without having taken college boards.
They arranged for me to take them in the fall. I had to take preparatory math courses in the summer, I didn't need English, but preparatory math courses.
And I stumbled at first, but very soon, I was near the top of my class.
So the thing that happened was, a man stepped out of nowhere, like the hand of God, in Chester, Pennsylvania, on a bad street corner and said, "You can be better. "
Now, if this man had not interceded in an almost godlike way, you probably would have gotten a job at the shipyard and would not have written a book or become an editorial book writer.
You would not probably have entered the professional class, so to speak.
Exactly, I have been very fortunate. And one of the things I talk about often, would annoys me as a journalist, when I have my journalist hat on, is that people will ask the question: What's difference between you brother and you, they'll say.
And many of those people who, many people who ask that question have their minds made up.
You see, they think it's a matter of constitution, personal constitution. And they find it difficult when I explain to them that chance and random events played a very big part in my life. And they play a big part in everyone's life.