But, I want to set down a few notes, feelings rumbling around inside my head, recently.

1. I’m tired of the formalism of this commitment. That’s both ideological and chronological. My feelings about science and society, collective endeavor at all sorts of levels of size and intent…haven’t changed. Aren’t likely to change after all the years I’ve been part of any corner of this social animal called “the movement”.
2. Cripes, I can hardly sort out when this started in my own life – much less the broader effort that flowed from participation with other folks. Think it was 1963 there could/would be any record of something collective, social, public and society-oriented that I helped kick off. And even that wasn’t solo [as intended] – because the specific civil rights organization I chose to work for…had also been chosen by another small group of friends and activists for the same reasons, to similar ends.
3. Folks at “headquarters” of the Congress Of Racial Equality down in NYC had heard from each group over time as we each moved towards foundation and put us together to try to work it out. I think that was 1963.
4. Little stuff before that doesn’t count – for me.
5. So, a strong-hearted shop floor Black activist name of Frank Welcome and I [self-taught radical intellectual] White – but, rooted in a couple of predominantly Black communities from early days of music, poetry and jazz, just plain rejection of the racist ethos of White America…became the founding co-chairfolks of the Bridgeport Chapter Congress Of Racial Equality.
6. This is the first effort that involved our young organization: August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom