Saying that the economic backgrounds of students do not predict whether violence will erupt, Willie cites the conflicts over desegregation in Mobile, Ala., as an example of affluent whites becoming violent. He adds that the legal system had too long protected them from desegregation efforts.

Willie says he cannot predict how desegregation efforts will proceed under President Reagan's administration. He does admit, though, that "the new administration will take positive action only if it contains people who have first-hand knowledge of minorities"--knowledge most new appointees sorely lack. What's more, minorities must still have the resolve to fight for integration, even though they know they fact a time-consuming and painful struggle, Willie says.

That statement rings of the philosophy of the late Martin Luther King Jr., and Willie admits that the late civil rights leader inspired him. Both Willie and King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948. "In college he was very much like the rest of the students, which made his meteoric rise to fame really almost miraculous,' he says. Willie named his second child after his two heroes, Martin Luther King and theologian Martin Buber.

Willie himself has a theological background. From 1970-74, he was the vice president of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church in the United States. He resigned after a highly publicized controversy in which he advocated the ordination of women in the church, even though the church canon did not specifically allow it. Willie says that, at that time, he was in-line to become the next president of the 3-million-member church and that he received numerous phone calls begging him not to participate in any service in which women were ordained. Willie says softly, "But I talked it over with my wife and decided if I was reluctant to participate in something fair and right because it would impair my opportunity to be elected to higher office, then that kind of selfishness was inappropriate."

That same motive led him to divest his stock in Eastman Kodak last summer, Willie says. He adds that it wasn't much stock--"10, 15, 20 shares"--but he sold it at a loss because he did not approve of Kodak's involvement with the government of South Africa. "I never told anybody about it publicly, because it wasn't that important," except as a symbol, he says.

Willie will return to Morehouse College in Atlanta next fall on a sabbatical. That move, he says, should benefit his three children more than himself, since it will expose them to the South. This decision seems to be based on much the same philosophy that underlies his faith in desegregation. Integration, after all, is no more than mixing different types of people together to form a diverse community.