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After I got my Master's, and they kept me on at Howard to teach for a year, I was making $150 a month, which I thought was terrific. That was ‘36, ‘37. But then, in ‘40, 1940, when Myrdal was working on the staff-- by the way, as an assistant to Otto --
Boy oh boy! My daughter was born that year, and the year before, we'd had a Rosenwald Fellowship. I think the Rosenwald Fellowship was a joint fellowship Mamie and I had -- maybe $1500, yean, $1500 to $2000 between us, which saw Mamie through Columbia, her graduate work.
But boy, to think I was making $175 a month. And I knew that the sacrifices in going to school, graduate school, were really worth it.
And we became friends. I really don't know how I managed to stand out with Myrdal, because there were about four or five or six research assistants, and I was not working directly with Myrdal, I was working with Otto, but I'd go down, you know, and sometimes he'd invite me to lunch with him. And we became friends.
Now, the project you're talking about, of course, is the AMERICAN DILEMMA (Myrdal's book).
AMERICAN DILEMMA, yes.
Did you write any kind of draft manuscript for him at all?
I did the part of it that was concerned with racial differences, and psychological characteristics, traits, you know.
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