Reginald Hildebrand - Rebecca Clark (clip)

Reginald Hildebrand (RH): And so, I was very much aware of her, and her as a force in that church, and in that community, and was very much aware of her supportive involvement and engagement with any young – at that time, I was relatively young – person who appeared to be trying to make something of themselves.

So the students at the university, or people starting businesses, or somebody running for office, or somebody doing something in the community. She wanted to know who you were and what you’re doing and offer her [thoughts], ‘cause she had a critique of it, and she was going to be as supportive as she could possibly be.

What I found…

Rob Stephens (RS): Sounds about right.

RH: Yeah. What I found striking about that and very impressive about that, was that she had had limited opportunities for education herself. And it would’ve been very… would not have been unusual for her to feel embittered or resentful, or you know, [like] your generation has it so easy and all this and all the things you’re getting that I could never have, but never any inkling at all, [all] you can do is just, you know, do it. And you know, and so she had a real sense of herself, being quite anchored in, confident in, grounded, no insecurities about who she was, no particular embitterments about what had been denied or, I mean she had to be aware… in her relationships with people and with politicians, with business leaders, knowing her – having a sense of her own… capabilities as a leader, as a thinker, as an organizer, as someone with energy and purpose.

[She] had to be constantly aware that some of the people that she was helping, were not nearly as qualified for the opportunities they had that she had that she was denied. And so that went, yeah I would think, you know, probably [would have] caused me to have mixed feelings about helping people along those lines, but that was never, never had any inkling of that.

When I think about that kind of skill set that she had and think about what she could have accomplished, had she not had all those silly race and class obstacles put in her way. It’s something I used to think about a good deal. But that had no, that – but there was never any indication that she was thinking about that.