He talks passionately of the many indignities, struggles, inhumanities, and derogatory terms, that his ancestors and, in time, himself, along with fellow blacks, suffered over the years. He relates the following memories. "We were all in the band," Humphrey said. "I played the E flat Sousa horn and Tom Swander the trumpet. But I didn't ride the band bus, because of that racial business. Clarence Nofsinger (Band Director), Arnold Henke or Dr. Ralph Kerr who were on the school board gave me a lift in their cars to any band event. But then at some point they decided I would have to ride the bus. I'll never forget that it was Tom Swander, Bill Ross, and Roscoe Dodds who came to me and said, "If anyone starts anything on the bus, we're going to help you out." And they did. My buddies were all lined up around me and they had influence over the rest of them. I never had a problem after that. Tom, Bill, and Roscoe came to my rescue. They looked out for people who couldn't help themselves.

I was also a member of the national conference of black mayors when I was mayor of Sidney. I knew Coleman Young, Tom Bradley, Andy Young.

I met Jesse Jackson in Washington, D.C. We had invited him to talk and he started soliciting funds for his organization. I told him I wouldn't give anything because that was bad manners for him to be a guest and ask for money like that. Well, that appeared in the Washington Post the next day about what this mayor from Sidney, Ohio, told Jesse Jackson. And of course Oliver Amos (Amos Press owner) heard about it. I worked at Amos Press. After that, when I went to a meeting like that, Oliver always cut me a big check, one was for $1,500. He told me he didn't want me to be the low man on the totem pole anymore.

Unable to eat comfortably inside a restaurant (he was denied access to The Spot restaurant in Sidney as a child), separate entrances to buildings for blacks, job discrimination, refusal to rent or sell property to blacks, separate water fountains, unequal education, these were just some of the obstacles faced by blacks throughout the nation from the end of the Civil War into the 1960s.

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