Shel Stromquist: “The welcome that the local African-American community gave us was just incredible in terms of their willingness to bring us into their homes, to take care of us, to orient us to their community. “

Patti Miller: “I'm just blown away by the African-American community, who had only been treated in the most horrible, despicable way by white people, taking white people into their homes and treating us so well. And this was an example of the black community, of how they were willing to take risks of losing their jobs, they were willing to take risks of being killed themselves. It happened to people who took in Civil Rights workers.” 

Alice Robertson: I guess it was just for a change, that you really wanted your children to grow up in a different world than you grew up in.

I want to help somebody every day. That's where my feelings come that God has given to me was to help somebody and that's what I want to do in this journey of life because life is a journey.” 

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Marvin Gatch: “And that kind of quiet courage really made me think that what I was doing and what the other volunteers from up north were doing really wasn't that much by comparison.” 

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Stromquist: African-Americans hadn't had much opportunity to get to know whites on an intimate level except in positions of great subordination. Obviously people had been maids and servants and had worked for white people but not on anything close to an equal level. And so whatever class differences or cultural background differences there might have been, and there certainly were, kind of melted away.