I’m sure that in Germany people also took an oath of secrecy. We know what that eventually led to. If it works that way with us, the sanctions for br… - Studs Terkel

They would sit and talk and tell us their hard luck story. Whether it was true or not, we never questioned it. It’s very important you learn people as people are.

During the strike, the KKK would come into the Labor Temple with guns, and break up meetings. Very frequently, they were police in hoods. Though they were called the Citizens’ Committee, everybody would call them Los Cuckoo Klan. (Laughs.) The picket lines would hold hands, and the KKK would beat them and cart them off.

My neighbors were angry with my mother, because she fed hungry men at the back door. They said it would bring others, and then what would she do? She said, “I’ll feed them till the food runs out.” It wasn’t until years later, I realized the fear people had of these men. We didn’t have it in our house.