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need at the time. There was frustration on the King thing. Nothing was happening. King went to Chicago and that fell apart completely.

Q:

The Cicero march.

Foner:

The Cicero march was a disaster, a real disaster. I remember King was shocked by what he saw in Chicago. He did not expect that to happen.

Q:

What happened?

Foner:

When they were stoned by white people. He did not expect that kind of response. They'd moved into an apartment and Coretta and everybody moved in. Andy. Andy even told me, he said, “This really was something. We never expected it. We didn't know how deeply ingrained it was in the North, because all our experiences were in the South, but in the North, in Chicago, we found it so hard-bitten and so violent that it really scared us,” in the sense that there was fear for their lives, moving from the South already. So that they were upset about that, and it came at a time when the Black Power was the thing. See, Black Power had an impact on some staff and some members, but strangely enough, the kind of members who went for Black Power, the kind of staff people, were--I don't want to use the word “phony,” but they were not the most honest and sincere people in the struggle that we were involved in. For example, I remember one organizer, now dead, Eddie Bragg, came out of the drug division, and he took on the Black Power thing and he was very glib and was doing all the salutes and all the thing and “Hi, brothers” and all that. It was like a charade, like it became clear to many people that he was using it to create a base for himself to protect himself in the union. Some people joined with him. But nevertheless, it did meet basic needs of blacks particularly in the North, to say nothing of the South, where there was the frustration. If you were going to reach people, it did have an impact.

Q:

What kind of impact? Did it create divisions within the union?

Foner:

It didn't create divisions in the union. It didn't create divisions in the union.

Q:

At no time?

Foner:

At no time did it create divisions in the union, because, for the most part, the union rode with it. Davis went down. Not only that, but at the time of Angela Davis, we went out front, or the Panthers. We





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