In Saint Louis, students used to come into my office, notice my bookshelves, and ask in wonder, “Have you read ALL these books?” They could hardly believe it when I truthfully said that I had. Once I could not read – when I was very young. And then I came to look upon reading as I regarded chess. My father forced me to learn how to play chess when I was six years old and I hated chess, from then until this very day. In our neighborhood in the 1950’s, everyone had a TV – everyone but us. My father called it “the idiot box.” I would go to friend’s houses to watch the hit TV shows everyone watched. Even my mother escaped to watch now and then. Eventually we got a TV in the mid 1960’s, when my grandmother came to live with us. By then I had outgrown my aversion to reading, but I can’t say I found conscious enjoyment in it then.

Obviously, as a child I couldn’t go to friend’s houses all the time. Books were obvious objects in which to indulge my curiosity. There were a LOT of books in the house. Two walls of our very large living room were covered floor to ceiling with my father’s books. There was another small book case with less serious things near the front window. And there were coffee table books. One of these was the Bible, a very large Bible with full color pictures. So, I read that. I don’t know why, but I was attracted to the Wisdom books. God started reeling me in at an early age. I always thought it was wisdom that I should pursue, not wealth or success.

One of the books I took to was Markings by Dag Hammarskjold. Its wisdom tears open one’s consciousness: “Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.” Dag dug deep. And another gem in the library was The Prophet by the Lebanese writer, Khalil Gibran. Not only is it overflowing with poetic wisdom, but contains mystically beautiful drawings. One book in the home library that fascinated me was Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence. It too had drawings. I suppose I was attracted to it because I thought it must have something to do with wisdom, but it fed my interest in history.

Somewhere at the end of my junior year in high school I joined the History Book Club and began reading what I wanted to, not what was assigned for some class or what I found in my parents’ library. Things like Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter never captured my imagination, but history did. As did current events, especially the civil rights movement and social work in the inner city, in which I became active. A very formative book was Crisis in Black and White by Charles E. Silberman. And so was The Autobiography of Malcolm X. At the other end of my life I read The Children by David Halberstam, which chronicles the necessary contribution of children and youth to the civil rights movement.