Nineteen fifty-five was the apex of the Age of Ike, the year that President Dwight Eisenhower, in golfing togs, climbed into an electric cart with the presidents of General Electric and General Motors and rolled down the fairway. Business was good and the country was easy, and the French surrender to the Vietnamese army at Dien Bien Phu was happening half a world away. A retired general was running the country, and that was good, because the United States and the Soviet Union were in the middle of an arms buildup, and the Soviets had just raised the ante by developing their own hydrogen bomb – very likely employing secrets stolen from the U.S.

The worlds overlapped in a million ways and places. The art world, the worlds of jazz, of modern classical music, of painting and poetry and dance were all interconnected. There were endless interweavings; they happened slowly, over several years, and they were the stronger for that slow growth.

Around this time [1949] … Ralph Bunche had just won the Nobel Prize. Joe Louis had been heavyweight champion of the world for a long time by then, and he was every black person's hero – and a lot of white people's too. Sugar Ray Robinson wasn't far behind him in popularity … Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby were playing baseball in the major leagues. Things were beginning to happen for black people in this country.