The Studs Terkel Reader_My American Century
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76 A Chicago Public High School.
77 Frank Burgos, writing about Richard A. Daley, son of the more famous former Mayor Daley, in the Chicago Sun-Times, September 19,1991.
78 Ray Hanania, Chicago Sun-Times, front page, October 29, 1991. The applicants were overwhelmingly black.
79 Division Street: America (1967).
80 He was a leader of the Black Panthers in Chicago. In a midnight raid, he and a colleague, Mark Clark, were killed by the State’s Attorney’s task force, while they were asleep. Several others were wounded. In 1990, the Chicago City Council voted to commemorate Fred Hampton Day. Subsequently, sixteen white aldermen objected, maintaining they had thought it was Dan Hampton, a Chicago Bears lineman, they were honoring.
81 The Kellogg School of Business Administration, Northwestern University.
82 A runty little colt who won the Kentucky Derby in 1922. My brother had a two-dollar bet on him. It was one of his life’s memorable moments.
83 “TV, Chicago style” is a phrase coined by John Crosby, television’s preeminent critic in the ’50s. He was referring to a free and easy, improvisational approach.
84 It was Gaylord Freeman’s last year as chairman of the board of the First National Bank of Chicago. A successor had already been chosen. “As soon as Bob was designated as my successor, it was inevitable that people say, ‘Gale Freeman’s a nice guy, but Bob’s the fella we should be talking to.’ I find now that every couple of weeks I have a free luncheon engagement. Where will I have lunch? I had a magnificent dining room here. I’ll go to a club. I won’t be in demand. I’ll be seeking company rather than being sought.”
—From American Dreams: Lost and Found, 1980
85 A neighbor of mine, an executive of a large consulting firm, had just touched fifty-five. It was suggested—astonishing him—that he accept early retirement. There had been no forewarning at all; he had been expecting a promotion. “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he deadpanned. “They had a younger guy in the wings, for about half my salary and none of my benefits...”
86 Leveraged buy-out.
87 “I wake up in the morning and dust off my wits,
I grab the newspaper and read the obits.
If I’m not there, I know I’m not dead,
So I have a good breakfast and go back to bed.”
—From a turn-of-the-century parlor song
88 “They’d assign roles to you. When some of the guys at headquarters wanted to tell some of the guys in the plants what was cookin’, I carried the message. I was a scavenger, too.
“The merchants cooperated. There’d be apples, bushels of potatoes, crates of oranges that was beginning to spoil. Some of our members were also little farmers, they’d come up with a couple of baskets of junk.
“The soup kitchen was outside the plant. The women handled all the cooking, outside of one chef who came from New York. Mostly stews, pretty good meals. They were put in containers and hoisted up through the window. The boys in there had their own plates and cups and saucers.”
—Bob Stinson, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, 1970
89 “We finally got the word: THIS THING IS SETTLED. The guys in the plant didn’t believe it. We had to send in three people, one after the other. When they did get it, they marched out of the plant with the flag flyin’ and all that stuff.”You’d see some guys comin’ out of there with whiskers as long as Santa Claus. They made a rule they wasn’t gonna shave until the strike was over. Oh, it was just like—you’ve gone through the Armistice delirium, haven’t you? Everybody was runnin’ around shakin’ everybody by the hand, saying, ‘Jesus, you look strange, you got a beard on, you know.’ Wives kissin’ their husbands. There was a lot of drunks on the street that night.
“When Mr. Knudson put his name to a piece of paper and says that General Motors recognizes UAW-CIO—until that moment we were non-people that didn’t even exist. That was the big one.”
—Bob Stinson, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, 1970
90 The committee, headed by Sen. Robert LaFollette, Jr., investigated violations of the Wagner Act, which allowed workers to join unions without employer interference.
91 On the walls of the cafeteria of Lane Technical High School in Chicago are such murals—Americans at work—courtesy of the WPA (Work Progress Administration).
92 In 1965, Jessie Binford, ninety, a colleague of Jane Addams, was reflecting on her home town, Marshalltown, Iowa, to which she returned for her last years: “Nobody walks here anymore. He jumps into his car, of course. I walk more than anyone else in this town. I’m often the only one on the street. I’d much rather get out in the evening at sunset and walk here than get into a car, with probably all the windows closed. The commonest thing I hear in this town is fear, fear of the unknown.”
—Division Street: America, 1967
In 1970, my wife and I were walking along the street of a small South
Dakota town. It was about nine o’clock at night. We were the sole pedestrians. A police car slowed down; the officer solicitously inquired: “What are you doing out at this hour? Are you lost?”
93 Buckminster Fuller reflected on his grandchild: “She heard the sound of the airplane before she heard the song of the nightingale. To her, the first sound was natural, the second, unnatural.”
94 A founder of Earth First!
Compilation © 1997 by The New Press Individual selections copyright Studs Terkel Preface © 2007 by Calvin Trillin
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