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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

I said, “Look, I'll read some parts of it.”

He says, “Moe, I'm going to take a plane, I'm going to come down to Charleston and I want to write this story from Charleston. Is it mine exclusively?”

“It's yours. Nobody else will I give it to but you.”

Q:

The only other reporter is on vacation?

Foner:

He comes down and he plans a Sunday forty-five-paragraph feature. He finishes the piece and he says, “Moe, it's terrific, it's great, it's going to do the trick.” So he goes back.

I came into New York that weekend, so at eight o'clock in the morning I get up and I drive into the city to go into the hotel, the Commodore, I think, that has the Washington Post. I pick up the Washington Post and I thumb through it and I thumb through it and there ain't a word in there. So it's now about nine o'clock. I can't call Jean Vanden Heuvel; it's too early. So about nine-thirty, I wake her up, and I said, “Jean, I don't mean to, but that story, it's not in there.”

She says, “I can't understand it. I can't understand it. Where are you?”

I said, “I'm home.”

She says, “I'll get back to you.” She calls me back an hour later. She says, “Moe, there was a problem. There was another story that broke and they had to use it on the front page, but I have an assurance from the editor, Ben Bradlee. I got him at his tennis club. He promised me, tomorrow it's on the front page, with an editorial.” And that's the way it was.

But by this time, before then, already, the Times had had three editorials. The Atlanta Constitution had had an editorial. There had been editorials all over the place. Also, we ran an ad, a full-page ad, in the Times. Stanley Glaubach designed it. It was a very well-written ad that a friend of mine wrote, with a top-to-bottom picture of Mrs. King, just of her face and body, and the big headline was, “If My Husband Were Alive Today,” copy, and then at the bottom, “He Would be in Charleston, South Carolina.” The story was great. It was a very short story. “And therefore I ask people to help support the strikers.” We made back more than the cost of the ad, but we got the visibility with the ad, plus we got letters with contributions from all over. Kids in classes, groups turning in, “My class met and this is the money.” We got a check for $200 from Jackie Onassis--Jackie Kennedy. Perfect. I have a Xerox of that. I have the original. No, I don't have the original.





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