“Five other students and I decided to go to the Pink Palace on a Friday. Tuesday was the day designated for black people to visit the Pink Palace, so our group wasn't welcome. The proprietor made us wait in a little area while he called the police, and we were arrested and incarcerated. As a result of the arrest, I was told that if I sought employment in the city, I wouldn’t be able to get a job in my field (teaching), so I moved to Mississippi and taught in an all-black Catholic school for a year. While I was there, Martin Luther King Jr. came through and visited the school. I got a chance to meet him, have a short conversation with him, and shake his hand.
"When I became a family man, I made it my business to take my children and all the children on my street to the Pink Palace Museum and the Memphis Zoo. They probably didn’t realize why it meant so much to me to do that, but it’s something we fought for.”