This autobiography recounts the life story of an African American educator at the University of Iowa from 1965 to 1991, as its first African American professor and then as its first African American administrator. The book recounts his childhood and family relations, his student years at the university and his graduation as an electrical engineer, his employment as a teacher, and his experiences of discrimination. The professor's major accomplishments during his tenure as an administrator as establishing policies that focused on human rights and which transformed the makeup of the student body are defined, as well as its faculty and staff, by seeking to eliminate discrimination based on race, religion, or other nonacademic factors and by substituting affirmative action for the traditional old-boy methods of selecting faculty and administrators. The book is organized into four sections which cover (1) the early years (his childhood and moving to Iowa); (2) the engineering years (schooling and teaching); (3) the administrative years (dealing with issues of in loco parentis, student turbulence, human rights, and diversity); and (4) the free years (retirement). (DB)