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trouble, some heartache now and then, but if I have
any regrets about it, they are only that I didn’t wise
up sooner. I was 16 when I really ‘came out.’ I
figure I wasted a couple of years.

“One more thing, by way of introduction, whether
I'd lead the life now if I were a younger man I
wouldn’t know. Things for a young Negro are far
different today than back in the 30’s when my libido
was beginning to stir. Not only my libido but my
ambitions, my hunger to get out and do something
in this world, to try and be somebody.

“Well, I haven done much and I'm still nobody.
But I've got a lot more than my parents ever had
and more than I ever dreamed of when it all started.
« “Just take every picture of a Harlem ghetto apart-
ment and make a composite. That’s where I was
born and where I lived with my mother, father, an
older brother and two younger sisters. Mother was
the good, religious Negro woman you see in the
movies, who keeps the kids clean, gets them to
school, sees that they go to church on Sunday. Dad
was a porter in a city building downtown, A Civil
Service job that gave him a steady income when no
one else on the block ever heard of one.

“So I had big advantages at the beginning. The
trick was to make the best of them. Without talent as