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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

I don't know who he was talking about. I just made a note of the date, a mental note that I should call him back in a month. I had been talking to Peter Edelman in Washington, and Peter was anxious to help and he was beginning to move with Mondale and the people in the Senate. Bill Vanden Heuvel was doing that. But I also asked what to do, something about that somebody's got a month to reply. It came from Farmer, who was at HEW, and he says, “I'll check it out for you.”

He then contacted Ruby Martin, who was the head of the Office of Civil Rights in the HEW under Johnson. He called me back and he says, “I think we've falling into something.”

I said, “What?”

He said, “Ruby tells me that what he is probably referring to is the fact that the hospital is in hot water with HEW over civil rights violations.” Ruby Martin knows that it goes back to her term of office, that they had found separate drinking fountains, everything separate but not equal, in the hospital, and that they were investigating it and there was the question of huge contracts, federal building. The hospital was building a new wing. There were millions of dollars of contracts, but nobody was pulling the plug on them. They were just rapping their wrists. They were going to look back and they were filing things back and forth, and it wasn't right. So that became an important thing later on.

I'm just trying to look at my notes here. I see Jean Vanden Heuvel. She would call me up and she says, “Look, I'm calling people and I'm telling them they can't understand Charleston until they talk to you, so you're going to get calls from Tom Wicker, Bill Styron, they're going to call you.” They did, to ask me what's happening in Charleston. She says, “Joan Kennedy wants to come to Charleston, too.” She's been in touch with Ben Bradlee, a friend of hers, and he's familiar with this. She's told him about it. Then she's in touch with Gloria Steinem, who knows about it. A lot of people. Ted Kennedy knows about it. I see without our knowing it Bill Vanden Heuvel is in touch with Governor [Robert F.] McNair. See, through Ted Kennedy. It's a Democratic governor, and he's beginning to talk on it. I notice here that the first time we met with Bill and Andy and Jean at his home, he asked us-- Elliot was there--“What are the settlement terms?” and we gave him the settlement terms. It was not a contract. We gave him pretty much.

Q:

It wasn't a contract?

Foner:

We knew we couldn't get a contract with Charleston, you know. We had experience in New York. It was a step towards a contract. It





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