Studs Terkel: Eternal Rebel
Interview by Catherine Komp

“Hold the fort! Hold the fort!” That’s the order Studs Terkel is shouting to the younger generation, telling them to get up and do something to halt the mounting string of assaults on this country. And if anyone can make that call, it’s Studs Terkel. Going on 92 years old, still teeming with punch and vitality, Terkel has spent the better part of his lifetime speaking out against injustices and fighting for a better world. Part of that world already exists, sometimes it’s just hard to see. Terkel shines a torch on this world, on a past filled with both trials and triumphs, trying to eradicate what he calls our national alzheimer’s disease. Just before the end of 2003, Studs Terkel welcomed Clamor in to his Chicago home to talk about this past, and his new book, Hope Dies Last. The following is an excerpt from that talk.

Clamor: Why a book about hope?

Studs Terkel: As you know I've written a lot things called oral histories. The last dealt with reflections on death called Will the Circle Be Unbroken. But it’s not about death, it’s about life. See death doesn't mean a thing unless there's something to be celebrated, the life. So basically it's about people who discuss it and how their lives came in to being, the events in their lives, the despair and the hope that came. Basically, that’s what it is. It does have a point of view, very definitely. All of the books, Working deals with what's it like to be a teacher, or a spot welder, or a checkout counter clerk, or a businessman, what's it like. Hard Times, the depression book, is about what's it like to be a kid, he, she, boy, girl, see a father come home at one in the afternoon with a tool chest on his shoulders and doesn’t work for the next eight years. What happened, you see. What’s it like to be black or white for that matter, the obsession with race, and age. Finally we come to a certain time in our history. I’m always trying to hit a certain moment, you know.

There is such despair now, considering the Administration. With Bush, the nature of him, Cheney, Rumsfeld, of preemptive strikes, of utter disdain for the intelligence of people. So I feel there's been an assault far more serious than September 11. September 11 was a wake-up call. We are part of the world. Do you realize that during World War II we were the only major participant who was neither bombed nor invaded. Ever member of the allies, every member of the axis power, one way or another. So war to us happens elsewhere, when we talk of war it’s always been elsewhere. And one of the people in this book Hope Dies Last, appeared in a previous book. Admiral Gene Leroque, he’s one of the heroes of World War II, young commander of a ship. He also founded the Center for Defense Information that monitors the Pentagon. He says the United States since the Cold War began, since the end of World War II, we the United States have engaged in more military adventures overseas than any empire in the history of the human species. He starts naming them, Guatemala, Panama, Granada! We never even heard of Granada until President Ronnie Reagan says it was a danger to us. We thought Granada was a place in Spain or a little variation of a folk song heard in supermarkets on the muzak. But no, it’s our enemy. And President Ronnie Reagan said the Sandinistas were going come through Mexico and they were going to invade the United States and nobody laughed, that sort of stuff. Finally it’s come to the time, such disdain and contempt for the intelligence of the American people. So, hope dies last, a lot of people lost hope.

And so, now I’m addressing the young people and why I want to be in the Clamor magazine, that I know has young readers. In 1932, now I’m 91 going to be 92. In 1932, I was unable to vote for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or it might have been the socialists or the communists for that matter (I would have voted for Roosevelt). But I was 20 years old. I was underage, because 21 was the minimum age. And then when the voting age became 18, I said there’s hope, my god it’s fantastic. And then I learned to discover, and listening to Bill Moyers make a great speech last November in Madison, Wisconsin, that only 16 percent of young people, between the ages of 18 and 23 voted in the last election. Sixteen, that’s one-six, percent voted which of course was Bush's in. So, I want to say this as a preface, I want to say to young people who say “I’m not going to vote, it doesn’t matter,” you are voting! When you stay home and don’t vote, you are voting for Bush. Bush hopes for you to say, I will not vote. That’s a vote for him. And that’s why he won, because you didn’t vote. So, this is your time. And you’ve got to vote. The reason they didn't vote is because of hopelessness, call it cynicism. And these are the two enemies we face.

What about apathy?

And apathy of course goes along with it, call it the unholy trinity. Apathy goes along with it, apathy, hopelessness, cynicism and that's all bush needs and that’s the point. And so, I got the idea for the book about 25 years ago, from a person I interviewed. Jessie de la Cruz is her name. And she’s a farm worker who helped Ceasar Chavez organize the Farm Workers of America. She said, “In times that are bleak, bad times, bewildering times, we have a saying in Spanish, La esperanza muere última, hope dies last. And that phrase stuck with me. I did several books since I met her, and then it came, this one. I had to do it now, it had to be written.

Who’s represented in the book?

These are portraits. All of my books are portraits of people. These are people today working, who are activists. The word is activist, to be activist is to be American, that’s the whole point. When we were founded Thomas Paine was a great visionary, and in Common Sense and Rights of Man he said the United States of America is something new in the world, it never has been, in which a commoner can look at a king and say “Bugger Off,” in which I, you, anybody can look at the president and say “Bugger Off!” He said fear possessed people of the world. Now imagine what Bush is banking on today, the prime impulse, fear! Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected during the Great American Depression, frightening and terrifying times, he said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Here is fear as the basis ever since 9-11. Now in 1791 Thomas Paine said fear has been overtaken, and reason was equated with rebellion and treason. So you have an attorney general who says, You disagree with me or the President and you’re a friend of terrorists. See reason becomes equated to treason. But Paine says all truth needs is the right to appear and once it appears people recognize the rest of the world not as enemy but as kindred. Now that was 1791 and we have just the opposite now. This disdain for the United Nations for example. So we have come from being the most respected nation in the world to the most loathed, feared, and despised nation. These people in the book are those who have always been a part of the minority questioning at the time what was the majority . . . Who runs the means of communication to being with? Fewer and fewer people, we know that! So they represent the alternative media, whether it press, or radio, or tv, as does Clamor magazine, so that's why we’re talking.

I came across this phrase in the “Younglings” section of the book, from Bob Hemauer, he says “Hope comes in the struggle.” Do you think people need to be activists and struggling in order to find that sense of hope?

Well, nothing comes over night, nothing is magic, it’s work of course. The very fact that you are going out knocking on doors, the very fact that you write a letter to the editor, the very fact that you take part in a rally whether it be for environmental safety or for peace or for civil rights or liberties, the fact that you do it, means you count. People feel that they don't count, that’s an old time word. You count! When you take part in something, and you partner with other people, even though the great many seem against, you suddenly realize you were doing something, even if that battle or moment may fail, you made an inroad. There's an old black spiritual, We're climbing Jacob’s latter, rung by rung, we’re climbing higher and higher, every rung . . . But now and then you slip back, and we’re in a slipped- back period. We’ve slipped a couple of rungs, so now it’s two rungs upward and one rung back, three rungs up and one rung back. It’s a long haul, but that battle itself will also give other people hope. These people in this book that I celebrate give hope to the rest of us, always have.

In your experiences over the years, would you say there’s less hope right now?

Right now there's bewilderment I’d say, there's cynicism and right now I’m speaking specifically of the young, because that to me is the vote, that will most determine. There should be a huge African and Hispanic vote too. But the young vote,16 percent! You know how embarrassing imagining the disdain, cynicism, and that's what you have to buck 'cause that’s easy, and it’s cheap and worthless. Emily Dickinson wrote “Hope is a thing with feathers.” And throughout you have that theme. But it's not a pollyanna book. I don't mean everything is wonderful and sweet and sunshine, I don’t mean have a nice day stuff. I’m talking about it’s a battle, but it’s there though. That's how the country came to be to begin with. And remember most of America, with the colonies that were here, were not for independence from the King. They didn’t give a damn one way or another. These were the agitators, it was Tom Paine, it was Sam Adams you see. They were the minority. And the fight against abolition, the fight against slavery, and then during the 60s there were students and African-Americans fighting for civil rights but also against the Vietnam War. In the beginning it was just the young, the few, who were beaten up by the jocks. And then the jocks joined them later on. I call them, these people who’s testimony you hear in the book, the prophetic minority. Prophetic is the word.

What does this prophetic minority look like?

I want to talk about the couple to whom I dedicated the book. Their names are Clifford and Virginia Durr, both long since dead. They were from the South, Montgomery, Alabama, the cradle of confederacy. A well-off white family, she was the daughter of a clergyman, not too well off but she might have been a southern bell. Her husband, Clifford Durr, was a member of the Federal Communications Commission under Roosevelt. And he’s the one who said the air belongs to the public – just the opposite of the FCC today under Bush, with Powell’s son as chairman, that says fewer and fewer people can own more and more things without regulation. And so there in Washington, during the days of the Great Depression and the Cold War is coming into being, and Clifford Durr was asked by Truman to sign a loyalty oath. And Clifford Durr says, I don't believe in that. “Oh not you,” Truman says, he knows Clifford Durr, Harry was a senator at the time. “Not you,” Harry says, “Just your staff.” And Clifford Durr says “I will not demean my staff!” And he resigned and went back to Montgomery. Now here’s Virginia Durr. She was in this battle for civil rights for years. But there were three ways she could have gone. I said she could have been a southern bell, as in Gone with the Wind, be kind to her “colored help” and joined a garden club. Or, if she had intelligence and sensitivity and did nothing, she could have gone crazy like her schoolmate, Zelda Fair Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, who was brilliant and went crazy. But she took the third path, “Something’s cockeyed here, something’s wrong here, and I'm going to fight!” So she became the rebel girl in that sense.

So they got into all kinds of trouble. And one time I remember her best, I first heard about her when she came one Sunday afternoon to Orchestra Hall in Chicago which seats 3600. She and Dr. Mary Mccloud Bethhume, famous African-American educator who was a close friend of Elanor Roosevelt. They came to speak out about the poll tax, the poll tax aimed at black people and poor whites and made it difficult for them to vote. And Dr. Bethume was great, but Virginia Durr, this white woman was fantastic. So I went back stage to shake her hand and I put forth my hand she says, “Thank you dear,” and she puts her hand in mine and in it are 100 leaflets. And she says “Now dear,” without missing a beat, with the Southern accent I like to imitate, “You hurry outside and you stand near the curb and pass out the leaflets because Dr. Bethume and I are speaking at the Abasyinian Baptist Church in three hours on the South Side.” So that's Virigina Durr.

The other memory I have of her is a picture on the front page of many papers. You know the House Un-American Activities Committee was challenging the Americanism of everybody that challenged whatever they represented. And there were a lot committees like this, there was one called the Internal Security Committee headed by Senator James Eastland. He was a 300-pound racist senator from Mississippi, in old Mississippi, and it’s his committee and he wants to get some publicity too to find “unamercians.” So he chooses this group, of which of Virigina and her husband are members, the Southern Conference of Human Welfare. And they were fighting for civil liberties in the middle of all the hostility and racism in the South and they tripled the black votership in a couple of years. But of course they were booed, ostracized, the Durrs were, getting telephone calls and all. And now Virgina is called to the stand by Senator Eastland. And the picture of her is a simple one, her legs were crossed and she had taken out her compact and was powdering her nose. And Senator Eastland asked her, “Did you ever know? Name the names!” And she just looked right passed him, like he wasn't there. She ignored him, he was invisible. Just powdering her nose! And of course he's going crazy, 300 pounds of racism, virulence, and indignation and being ignored. He almost had an apoplectic fit. So they ordered her off the stand and later on the reporters come around and they're in awe of her, and they’re laughing too of course. And they ask, “Mrs. Durr, what impelled you to ignore the Senator the way you did?” And she says “Well, I think that man is just as common as pig tracks.” And they start laughing, and then she sighs, she was very colorful, and says “Ah, I guess I'm just an old fashioned Southern snob.

Page 1 / 2 ... Next Page