I SKETCHED MY OWN ODYSSEY from working class Bronx rebel to freestyle libertarian in my second book, It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand, which was first published in 1971. While many have claimed that my semi-autobiographical book was closer to fiction than fact, the book was true in spirit even if not always literally accurate in mundane detail.

I AM NOT ONLY NOT A LIBERTARIAN, I’m not even an Austrian. Walter Block however wants me to explain the origin of what ideas I do have, and I think it may amuse.

MY GRANDFATHER (1882–1960) WORKED AS A mechanic at the plant where the beautiful Minerva cars were produced. He was active in the Belgian Labourers’ Party, the predecessor of the Belgian Socialist Party. In Wilrijk, a village near Antwerp, he became a councillor for that Party and then, in the chaotic days of the Liberation, at the end of the Second World War, the interim mayor. He was a quiet, soft-spoken and above all gentle man.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A LOUD MOUTH. Even as a young boy, my mother would often say, “Someday, that mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble.” Today, as a criminal defense attorney, I use that “mouth of mine” to help get people OUT of trouble. It wasn’t always that way.

I WAS BORN IN VANCOUVER, British Columbia, the year “How Much is that Doggie in the Window” topped the charts: 1950. That makes me a boomer, a fact only important when we jump forward to 1968.

MY FIRST MEMORY OF POLITICS is from 1948. When I was told one night that my father would be late for supper because he had to vote, I excitedly met him at the front door to ask for whom he had voted. The reason this incident remains in my memory is that I was hurt and disappointed when he declined to tell me, saying only that he had voted for “the best man.” I was anxious to know because I had begun kindergarten that year and was desperate to declare my political allegiance.

SINCE I AM BLACK AND GREW UP IN segregated Jackson, Tennessee, attended college at the famous Tuskegee Institute, and was in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963, one might have expected me to join 250,000 people participating in The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

ONE DAY, LONG AGO (sometime during 1995), I woke up in the morning and realized that I had ceased to be one of those agnostics or atheists I had known and interacted with while teaching in philosophy departments. Instead, I had become a Christian libertarian. That these two were compatible was one of the important realizations of my adult life. I wish more Christians would realize that initiating coercion to achieve desirable social goals is out of accord with true Christianity (see Rev.

I WAS BORN IN VOLTA REDONDA, State of Rio de Janeiro, where my father worked as an engineer for one of the most famous Brazilian state companies, i.e., Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN). CSN was founded in 1941 as the first steel producer in Brazil. The U.S. funded it after the then Brazilian president, the dictator Vargas, threatened to join the axis powers instead of allowing American military bases in Brazil.

I CALL THIS “MEMORIES OF MURRAY,” because my interactions with Murray Rothbard have been the most stimulating of my 40+ years of involvement in the libertarian movement.