How lucky was I to become a social worker in the 1960s in the middle of the civil rights revolution? Answer? Very lucky. Miracles happened, most importantly in civil rights, but also, in poverty and economic insecurity. I became involved in social work and I became a foot soldier in the civil rights movement as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh. Though I was both Jewish and Atheist, I was inspired in high school by a Christian minister, Martin Luther King, who was preaching non-violent resistance to racial segregation and discrimination in America. I read his letter from a Birmingham jail and knew he was special. He framed the issue as a moral crusade to make good on the American promise of equal opportunity for all, to eliminate the gap between our equal opportunity ideals and our ugly practice of racial discrimination. I had the privilege actually of hearing him speak in person twice, first time in 1963 at the March on Washington where I was lost in a sea of people. We were entertained before the speakers came by all the great folk singers, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez. One after the other. Amazing. I wanted to hear John Louis speak. Louis was the head of the student non-violent coordinating committee, SNCC. He was my age. The King was a next generation ahead, but Louis had suffered horrible beatings by the police time and again. I hardly could hear Louis speak, but when King started to speak, a hush came over the crowd and I couldn't see where he was. As I said, I was lost, but I could hear him. It was an amazing speech. I have a dream. Second time I heard him, it was in a small black church in the South side of Chicago. It was like a small feeder and there was a balcony where we sat two couples. My best friend in social work, his wife worked at the Urban League in Chicago and she got us tickets to go hear King speak. Amazing. It was just poetry. I knew we were going to win this fight, this epic struggle because there were lots of victories along the way. There were victories at college, there were victories in my city, there were victories across the nation. The most momentous memorable victory I think was when President Johnson addressed the joint session of congress in 1965 and adopted the anthem of the civil rights movement as his own. He paused in the midst of a speech and said to the congress people, the senators, "We shall overcome." I could hardly believe my ears. The President, my President of the United States not only was on our side, he was taking the lead and the change was dramatic. Legal segregation eliminated that it come about from the 64 act. No separate drinking fountains, separate hotels, separate restaurants, and it wasn't just the South. What happened in the North was remarkable as well. The decrease in avert discrimination and that the nation changed where we thought we had to treat people who are Black with dignity. A remarkable change. In 1964, in response to Johnson's declaration of a war on poverty, a Congress enacted the office of economic opportunity in 65 Congress enacted Medicare and Medicaid. There had been a fight between people who advocated a universal Medicare program and people who advocated an income tested Medicaid program and Johnson said, "Let's have both," and we did in '65. Between '65 and '72, Congress increase social security benefits five times, doubling the real value of benefits and reducing poverty amongst the aged from about one in three for closer to one in 10. Imagine that, one in three old people were poor by an official definition of poverty until we, as President Nixon put it, "Threw money at the problem." Well, what else would we do to reduce poverty amongst the aged? Put them to work? Raising social security benefits was an amazing social accomplishment. I used to say it was something you could write home to mother about if you were involved in making it happen. It was a great time to become and to be a social worker.