I’ll never forget one of the first families I visited. The father was a railroad man who had lost his job. I was told by my supervisor that I really … - Studs Terkel

I wanted to be accepted. It must have been in sixth grade. It was just before the Fourth of July. They were trying out students for this patriotic play. I wanted to do Abe Lincoln, so I learned the Gettysburg Address inside and out. I’d be out in the fields pickin’ the crops and I’d be memorizin’. I was the only one who didn’t have to read the part, ’cause I learned it. The part was given to a girl who was a grower’s daughter. She had to read it out of a book, but they said she had better diction. I was very disappointed. I quit about eighth grade. “Any time anybody’d talk to me about politics, about civil rights, I would ignore it. It’s a very degrading thing because you can’t express yourself. They wanted us to speak English in the school classes. We’d put out a real effort. I would get into a lot of fights because I spoke Spanish and they couldn’t understand it. I was punished. I was kept after school for not speaking English.

I don’t see where people get all this bull about the kid who’s gonna be President and being a newsboy made a President out of him. It taught him how to handle his money and this bull. You know what it did? It taught him how to hate the people on his route. And the printers. And dogs.

I think we’d hurt more now if we had a Depression. You don’t see how they’d make it if it happened to ’em again. Because they take a lot of things for granted. I mean, you see ’em now and they have everything. You can’t imagine how they would act if they didn’t have it. If they would even remember what they did. ’Cause they’re past it now. They already done it, and they figure they’re over it. If we fell now, I think everybody would take it a lot harder. Everybody’d step on each other. They’d just walk all over and kill each other. They got more than they ever need that they’d just step on anybody to keep it. They got cars, they got houses, they got this and that. It’s more than they need, but they think they need it, so they want to keep it. Human life isn’t as important as what they got