1968
The City College of New York was one of my major choices, partly because it was right there in the city. As a matter of fact, during my college years I spent time after school working in my father's pharmacy, and we lived right close by. I liked the idea of CCNY. One of the reasons was that I wanted to major in international relations. I really appreciated several people who were teaching there and who I wound up taking courses with. Jean Herskovits was the daughter of Melville Herskovits. I was always interested in African studies, and she was teaching African history. I had another teacher who was teaching international law. One of the oldest or the last members of the American Society of African scholars was John Davis. He was teaching political science. I had a chance to study with those folks. International relations, at the time, was an amalgam of political science, sociology, and history. I was planning to make my major concentration in African studies, so that was a great grounding. I was a member of the Onyx Society, which was a black student union. During my senior year was when Martin Luther King was assassinated. There was a lot of stuff going on in the city that year and the year before. It was a very weird time. That was the time when we had to really figure out who we were and how we were going to move forward. Those were exciting times. I enjoyed my time at CCNY. It was a great school, and it was a great fit.