tavis: but it is the case, though, that these days, sadly, and your wife, marian wright edelman, makes this point all the time at the cdf, children's defense fund, it is the case that the younger you are in this country, the more likely you are to be poor. >> that is true. that is true. tavis: i raise that because if young people are going to be engaged around a particular issue, through occupy or through any other way, it seems to me that if the younger you are the more likely you are to be poor, that would be an organizing issue. >> exactly. exactly. when i said youth, i didn't necessarily mean only low-income youth. tavis: sure, sure, sure, exactly. >> because young people are the idealistic people in our society, and when we had the civil rights movement it was certainly, the heart of it, was african american young people who went to those lunch counters and said we're not going to take it anymore. they sat in, and i can remember vividly being in europe as a young person just out of college, seeing all the, in the late '50s, seeing all the activism there and wondering why we didn't

marian wright edelman. these persons have had great impact on my life. >> what did you learn from dr. king, in particular, because your legacy is so intricately tied to dr. king's. you were literally standing on the balcony. >> i was on the ground. we were talking to each other. >> to be that close to him not just at that moment but over the course of those years u what were the big lessons you learned from dr. king? >> oh, boy. one i think is intellectual preparation. he was a serious scholar. you think of him, he did a debate on the negro and the constitution at age 14. >> wow. >> age 15 he went to moorehouse. he finished at 19. he was a furious scholar. he read at least one fiction an nonfiction book a week. i mean, he was as scholarly as he was activist. and so i'm not bad as a scholar, but i certainly appreciate the need to keep researching the great history of our time. i think i got something from him. >> i think you got a whole lot of that. in 1984 and in 1988, you ran for president of the united st