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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

freelancer, Roger Williams. I forget who the reporter from Newsweek was. They were all interested.

Then I got into contact with Av Westin, who was then at the CBS network. He was the editor of the Nightly News, and he was interested, and another guy named Van Kardish, I think from ABC, became interested in it. And before you knew it, these people were coming down and beginning to write stories about it.

Q:

How were you selling the story?

Foner:

The most important civil rights thing ever since King. This was a reawakening of the spirit, the possibility of changing things in the South, a union of black workers, women, and people in jail, that kind of thing.

Jean Stein would become interested, too, and Jean knows everybody in the whole world. You just name somebody and Jean says, “I'll get in touch with him for you,” and she'll call me back and say, “Call him. This is his number. He's waiting for a call from you.” Whether it's network people, whether it's Tom Wicker, they're all friends of Jean. Everybody's a friend of Jean. Through it all, I would stay in touch with Stanley. Stanley was in New York.

Our phones were tapped--we knew it--by the state FBI. Therefore, I would have to call from street phones to talk to Stanley.

Q:

His phones weren't tapped?

Foner:

I didn't go checking on that. All I knew, that mine were. I'd have these shouting things, to be heard. I'll tell you about another shouting thing that happened later with Jim Farmer, because that's an interesting thing.

Jim Farmer was then an under secretary of the HEW, under Nixon, and I had reached him early in the strike and he said something that we should send him a telegram, and we did. When I spoke to him, he did sound kind of leery about the whole thing. He did not sound as excited as I had expected that he should on the thing. Then I remember later on calling him, and we were in a bar and I put in a call to Farmer, and I remember, over the jukebox I was shouting and it was very hard to hear him speak, and he sounded scared. He said to me something, that he can't move in until May 15, but in May they gave them a month to reply, a month from May 15.

Q:

They gave who a month to reply?





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