lovable hero
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"It is at such a time and circumstance that I became aware of my own arrogance. For a stupid moment, I had thought I discovered Mahalia Jackson�We are seated in her Prairie Avenue flat, oh, shall we say about twenty-five years ago?�. Her hands are clasped on the kitchen table. They are delicate, graceful hands. Not dainty, not soft. The calluses are eloquently there. She had scrubbed floors of other people's parlors. She had laundered other people's finery. She had nursed other people's children. A bitter reflection some years later: 'I nursed little Jimmy like he was my own. Do you think he was in that mob that threw rocks at Dr. King?'"

"In recalling Chicago '68, it is these moments that most immediately come to mind. A fusing of the mindlessness to the Theatre of the Absurd. For [writer] James Cameron, it shall always be a unique experience. Only a few weeks before, he had observed the Paris riots. There, too: the police versus the young. The French police, he believes, are more calculatedly cruel; there is more style to their sadism; they are more personal. 'Here, it was mindless and thus more shocking.' and perhaps, as consequences appear to indicate, more numbing to the young."