As I listened to her I found highlights that I could use in my talks after lunch.  For instance, both of us had kept a journal.  Hers was destroyed to protect her family from retribution after the war.  Mine became the basis of my book.  But not everyone was to hear my talk.  When Warner Montgomery introduced me to the large audience, he said I was an outside agitator and explained I would be talking about working for Martin Luther King in 1965.

I must admit I was a bit surprised that he called me an outside agitator before a white audience.  When I heard it, the idea of the Ku Klux Klan flitted across my memory.  I hoped to get out of the building alive.   (There was one ninety-seven- year old black woman who said that all the other black participants had died and left her behind.)

Things have changed and people were very receptive to my past activities except for one woman.  I went into the ladies room before my talk.  As I walked in the door I heard an attractive woman say, “I’m not going to hear that agitator speak.  If I did, it would just make me angry.  They were wrong to come down here to change the way we lived.”