I was born into intense poverty in 1923. Since I wasn't good at sports, and with my father assigning me huge workloads to do around the house that would last for at least a couple of days, and then just in case I did finish the work, I was to wait around the house until he got home to assign more work, so when I had time I read. If I got the chance, I would read all day and most of the night. By age 15, I had read all the fairy tales ever written. I moved on from them to Greek and Nordic mythology which I loved. Even some Mideastern mythology. Then a scattering of books of all kinds on subjects by authors such as C. Doyle, Robert L. Stevenson, and more, including poetry. Then I became interested in books by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Gunnar K. Myrdal ("An American Dilemma," which made a deep impression on me). Also Niccolo Machiavelli, who also impressed me, and Henri Tocqueville, the French statesman and traveler, writing of his trips to this country and his impressions. Their thoughts and ideas struck chords within me. Also, there was King Arthur and his knights, and on to many Street & Smith Wild West stories, and Jack London books. These readings formed my view of life. The stories revolved around heroes and heroic deeds. Mostly men acted alone to relieve some oppression or disaster. The books on racial problems and their intractable nature posed the question of my future in a dim light. I came to understand that I was mired in a group that was destined to be the unwanted and unneeded underclass, that the chance to move and act as did the heroes in the novels was denied people like me, not by force of arms but by closing the door of opportunity as tightly as possible. Such embedded self-defeating attitudes of African Americans can be easily traced back to the evils of institutionalized slavery--that is, the American-European version. There is no comparable example in history. Historically, men were enslaved and brutalized by other men like themselves who were not much different in their manner of doing things. The slave could adapt and then disappear into the conquering race through assimilation. Also, there was no carefully designed system, like this in the U.S., to deliberately keep slaves ignorant and to particularly debase the male slave by concentrating an attack on his mentality and intelligence, designed to inculcate him with the notion of inferiority equivalent to a beast of burden, or just an animal. The African American slave in this land was unable to escape the assault on his mind. He encountered it everywhere; it was a state-supported crime institutionalized into the fabric of this country in such a way that it appeared to its white citizens to be as natural as breathing, so they found no need to make mention of it when they drafted their constitution. To them, Africans were already free in their serenity as is any other farm animal. This legacy haunts both races today.