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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

that feel! They hear it from us, but hearing is very different than feeling. They obviously agree with it -- they're not going to challenge it, and quarrel with it. But they don't come to it that way. They will come to it more in terms of improving the lot of Black people. That is moving with the civil rights struggle, as it moves in to a black power -- you know, they're part of that kind of movement. We thought the civil rights movement was another phase of what we were doing. That we were happy to be with it and to be taking part as it grew, and to whatever degree we could to help it along, to be with it. We were proud to be with it.

Let me back up a bit. We are also -- at least I speak for myself -- greatly impressed, there's an impact on us, of the conditions that we find out exist in the black community. We'd read about it all the time, but when we came face to face with it, it's a shocking kind of thing. Because now we know the names behind those faces and the people behind the faces. So it has a great effect and impact on us. If you're not careful, you have a tendency to overdramatize working people -- to see all the workers as heroes and heroines, and they have no human failings. One of Davis' great virtues is that he understood the strengths and the weaknesses of people, so that you are not going to be greatly disappointed by what might happen if they would move in a different direction, what you have to do to keep them moving.

There is also a difference in education -- that's important too. Not that all of us were, you know, scholars. But we grew up in a generation that followed all events. We knew what was happening in the world, and in the country and in the state and in the city. These things we followed carefully -- we read about them, we tried to read as much as we could to know more about them. We found that the new generation, they were non-readers, they had no background, they were not particularly interested in finding out a great deal about it. For example the inquisitive ones you would assume would come forward and say, “Look, can you tell me what I should read?” I would go to people and say, “Look, maybe you ought to read this.”

Q:

What were you recommending?

Foner:

At that time, I would recommend things that I thought were easily understood -- that was a very difficult thing. The two things that I found to be the most easily understood -- and probably were difficult to understand -- were [Leo] Huberman's We the People and Man's Worldly Goods. Because Huberman had a knack of being able to write simply, and also interestingly. I would bring the book and say, “Here, you want to borrow it? You can read it.” Sometimes something





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