91
An organization of young Southern whites: the “hillbilly” equivalents of the Black Panthers and the Young Lords.
92
Citizen’s Action Program. It was originally called Committee Against Pollution. It is a grass-roots organization that began in Father Dubi’s community and has expanded in membership as well as in aims. It has challenged, on specific occasions, the political as well as the industrial power brokers of the city.
93
Two of Mayor Daley’s most perfervid spokesmen in the city council.
94
Chicago Housing Authority.
95
This battle was apparently won. The newly elected governor, Dan Walker, had committed himself to opposing its construction. Mayor Daley still insists he’ll go ahead . . . At the moment. the issue is joined.
As for the most recent development: “Mayor Daley has won the right to bypass Governor Walker and build the Crosstown Expressway with city funds under terms of a compromise federal highway bill approved by a House-Senate conference committee” (
Chicago Sun-Times,
July 22, 1973). Moral: The fight to save a neighborhood is forever.
97
I was present at the lobby rally. I had been invited to act as the MC. It was my most exhilarating experience, too.
98
R. D. Laing,
The Politics of Experience
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1967).
99
His son Tom recalls his father’s craftsmanship: “If there was the tiniest space, he could swing back the biggest truck in there, one, two, three, wit’ maybe one inch to spare. This little guy up there in ‘at truck . . .”
100
His son Tom recalls: “My father was blacklisted in 1949 and used to have a bodyguard and all this . . .” Bob, his other son, remembers: “At the time of the strike my father went on the radio with Mayor LaGuardia.”
101
“You go on false alarms, especially two or three in the afternoon, kids comin’ home from school. And four in the morning when the bars are closed. Drunks. Sometimes I get mad. It’s ten, eleven at night and you see ten, twenty teen-agers on the corner and there’s a false alarm on that corner, you know one of ’em pulled it. The kids say, ‘What’s the matter, man? What’re ya doin’ here?’ and they laugh. You wanna say, ‘You stupid fuck, you might have a fire in your house and it could be your mother.’”
Text © 1972, 1974 by Studs Terkel.
Foreword © 2004 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form,
without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York
Distributed by Perseus Distribution
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission
to reprint previously published material:
Grove Press, Inc., and Methuen and Co. Ltd.: For eight lines from
Mother Courage and Her Children
by Bertolt Brecht (1963).
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.: For five lines from “A Worker Reads History,” reprinted from
Selected Poems of Bertolt Brecht
, translated by H.R, Hays.
Los Angeles Times
: For excerpts from the article “Ram Coach Lives, Works by Demanding Code” by Bob Oates,
Los Angeles Times
, July 9, 1970. Copyright © 1973,
Los Angeles Times
.
Mills Music, Inc., a Division of Belwin Mills Publishing Corp.: For thirteen lines of lyrics of “Down Home in Tennessee” by William Jerome and Walter Donaldson. Copyright 1915 by Mills Music, Inc., copyright renewed 1943. Used with permission.
The New York Times
: For excerpts from an article on Dr. John R. Coleman,
The New York Times
, June 10, 1973. Copyright © 1973 by The New York Times Company.
The Viking Press: For eight lines from “We Are Transmitters,” reprinted from
The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence
, edited by Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts. Copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli & C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. All rights reserved.
Warner Bros. Music: For seven lines of lyrics of “Pretty Baby” (Gus Kahn, Tony Jackson, Egbert Van Alstyne). Copyright © 1916 Jerome H. Remick & Co. Copyright renewed. All Rights Reserved.
Whitehall Laboratories: For an excerpt from the television advertisement for “Anacin.”
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Terkel, Studs.
Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How
They Feel about What They Do
1. Labor and laboring classes—United States—1970–
—Interviews. I. Title.
HD8072.T4 331.2’0973
73-18037
eISBN : 978-1-595-58766-4
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