To that end, I was studying at night with UNISA, short for the University of South Africa, a respected educational institution that offered credits and degrees by correspondence.

In addition to trying conventional law cases, Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman oversaw real estate transactions for African customers. Walter brought the firm clients who needed a mortgage. The firm would handle their loan applications, and then take a commission, which it would split with the real estate agent. In fact, the law firm would take the lion’s share of the money, leaving only a pittance for the African real estate agent. Blacks were given the crumbs from the table, and had no option but to accept them.

Even so, the law firm was far more liberal than most. It was a Jewish firm, and in my experience, I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice. The fact that Lazar Sidelsky, one of the firm’s partners, would take on a young African as an articled clerk — something almost unheard of in those days — was evidence of that liberalism.

Mr. Sidelsky, whom I came to respect greatly and who treated me with enormous kindness, was a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand and was in his mid-thirties when I joined the firm. He was involved in African education, donating money and time to African schools. A slender, courtly man, with a pencil mustache, he took a genuine interest in my welfare and future, preaching the value and importance of education — for me individually and for Africans in general. Only mass education, he used to say, would free my people, arguing that an educated man could not be oppressed because he could think for himself. He told me over and over again that becoming a successful attorney and thereby a model of achievement for my people was the most worthwhile path I could follow.

I met most of the firm’s staff on my first day in the office, including the one other African employee, Gaur Radebe, with whom I shared an office. Ten years my senior, Gaur was a clerk, interpreter, and messenger. He was a short, stocky, muscular man, fluent in English, Sotho, and Zulu, expressing himself in all of them with precision, humor, and confidence. He had strong opinions and even stronger arguments to back them up and was a well-known figure in black Johannesburg.

That first morning at the firm, a pleasant young white secretary, Miss Lieberman, took me aside and said, “Nelson, we have no color bar here at the law firm.” She explained that at midmorning, the tea-man arrived in the front parlor with tea on a tray and a number of cups. “In honor of your arrival, we have purchased two new cups for you and Gaur,” she said. “The secretaries take cups of tea to the principals, but you and Gaur will take your own tea, just as we do. I will call you when the tea comes, and then you can take your tea in the new cups.” She added that I should convey this message to Gaur. I was grateful for her ministrations, but I knew that the “two new cups” she was so careful to mention were evidence of the color bar that she said did not exist. The secretaries might share tea with two Africans, but not the cups with which to drink it.

When I told Gaur what Miss Lieberman had said, I noticed his expression change as he listened, just as you can see a mischievous idea enter the head of a child. “Nelson,” he said, “at teatime, don’t worry about anything. Just do as I do.” At eleven o’clock, Miss Lieberman informed us that tea had arrived. In front of the secretaries and some of the other members of the firm, Gaur went over to the tea tray and ostentatiously ignored the two new cups, selecting instead one of the old ones, and proceeded to put in generous portions of sugar, milk, and then tea. He stirred his cup slowly, and then stood there drinking it in a very self-satisfied way. The secretaries stared at Gaur and then Gaur nodded to me, as if to say, “It is your turn, Nelson.”

For a moment, I was in a quandary. I neither wanted to offend the secretaries nor alienate my new colleague, so I settled on what seemed to me the most prudent course of action: I declined to have any tea at all. I said I was not thirsty. I was then just twenty-three years old and just finding my feet as a man, as a resident of Johannesburg, and as an employee of a white firm, and I saw the middle path as the best and most reasonable one. Thereafter, at teatime, I would go to the small kitchen in the office and take my tea there in solitude.

The secretaries were not always so thoughtful. Some time later, when I was more experienced at the firm, I was dictating some information to a white secretary when a white client whom she knew came into the office.