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Wilhelm
Joseph came to the U.S. from Trinidad in 1965. He found himself in the
Deep
South in the middle of the
civil rights movement. Joseph felt he had
to get
involved. He organized
pickets, marches and
boycotts. He also organized many
voter registration drives. Many people didn’t like what he was doing. They
said, ”You can’t come
from across the sea and tell us how to do things here,”
Joseph says.
Joseph
grew up in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. He is the
oldest of six children. Joseph’s mother
taught all her children the
importance of education,
integrity,
honesty, hard work and
good manners. He
describes her as ”a
remarkable lady.” Joseph studied at the best schools in
Trinidad. After receiving a track athletic
scholarship to a Louisiana
college, he transferred to Mississippi Valley State University, a college
with mostly black students. It was there he got involved with the civil
rights movement. ”The
sharpness of the
racial division here was very
surprising,” Joseph says. ”Black people were not even covered in the news
unless it was a crime.
I could not figure it out.”
Joseph says he wanted to make a difference in the world and
attended
the University of Mississippi Law School. He was among the first black
students there.
Since then, Joseph has been working for the public interest. He is
now Executive Director of the
Legal Aid Bureau, Inc.,
based in Baltimore, which
provides
free legal services to poor people.
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