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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

They went to the State Capitol in Albany. I remember Margot was working on that. Through a friend we arranged the exhibition by students on working would go up to the Capitol and would be big blow- ups. These were blow-ups -- oh, no. Excuse me. Let me get it right. Ossie Davis had come to a program at the union, in the union headquarters, to speak about Langston Hughes. We were then spending a month on Langston Hughes for Black History Month. Ossie came and we invited students from all levels.

Q:

You had approximately a thousand students in two sessions.

Foner:

We had a thousand students there sitting on the floor, asking questions, reading Langston Hughes' poetry when he asked them who knows a Langston Hughes poem, and we then put out a booklet with the photographs of the kids who were there, and their quotes of letters they had sent to Ossie about what it meant to them. “Please come to our school.” We put that together and got it around. It was seen upstate through a friend. The blow-ups of those kids' faces and their letters were part of the exhibition. The State Commissioner of Education came and spoke with the media there, invited the kids up to be there, be photographed and interviewed.

Q:

Now, if someone said to you, “This is a union program. What is it doing involving kids who are far removed from the union?” what would you say?

Foner:

What we found out early on is that in 1199 in New York City, most of our members' kids are in these schools.

Q:

Public schools.

Foner:

In the public schools, in high schools, and very often they don't even know that their parents are members of the union. When they come to the gallery and they discuss something about labor and they suddenly say, “Oh, my mother, she must be in 1199. She does this in the hospital.” So they're really talking to the sons and daughters of our members, and anything that can make that closer and tighter is a benefit to the family and to the union. It's a unifying factor that Bread and Roses is able to accomplish because of the way it does it.

Q:

And even if they're not children of 1199 members, their parents may be members of other unions, and they're going to grow up and work in jobs where they have a choice about perhaps whether or not to be active in a union.





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