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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

Master:

145th Street.

Foner:

Right. And even though they're working, they have to be in touch with all kinds of things that are new, radical kinds of things. They've got to be, and that must be the way it bounces over to me.

Master:

Can you recall the first issue or the first time you picked up a newspaper and felt angry or concerned?

Foner:

No, but, you see, I don't recall reading The New York Times at that period. I may have looked at it. I must have as a college student, I must have looked at it, but I don't remember reading. Now you're talking '32, '33, and you're getting to Hitler and what was happening at the time.

Master:

Hitler is 1933.

Foner:

You see, by the time I'm in college, I associate mostly with basketball players, to finish work and rush to practice. I don't recall a lot of that thing happening to me, and t's got to be around '33 that it was beginning to percolate.

Master:

Hitler gets elected. You don't remember. This was March of 1933, I think, or something like that. I can't remember.

Foner:

March of '33 he comes into power. This is sort of a blank to me, and I have to reconstruct it myself because I can't believe that Hitler would come to power and I would not -- because I remember my parents were always listening to the news on the radio, H.B. Kaltenborn and that kind of thing. What I used to listen to on the radio, I remember, was at 7:00 o'clock we would listen to the Easy Aces. They came at 7:15, but Bing Crosby was coming in, a big deal. Of course, I remember I had seen Bing Crosby when he was with Whiteman, with the Rhythm Boys. I knew about it because this new phenomena they built on to come on, and then they canceled, they kept saying there was something wrong with his throat, and they kept building the thing. But we listened to the radio news.

Master:

So you had to have heard it.

Foner:

I knew it. If I didn't, someone told me.

Master:

One thing, we've been trying to struggle with this question of how you became politicized, but you mentioned to me once in the office about playing basketball in Madison Square Garden.

Foner:

Yes, but that wasn't political. That was 1934.





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