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“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 had to see the poverty. If the family needed clothing, I was to investigate how much clothing they had at hand. So I looked into this man’s closet–(pauses, it becomes difficult)–he was a tall, gray-haired man, though not terribly old. He let me look in the closet–he was so insulted. (She weeps angrily.) He said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ I remember his feeling of humiliation . . . this terrible humiliation. (She can’t continue. After a pause, she resumes.) He said, “I really haven’t anything to hide, but if you really must look into it . . . ‘ I could see he was very proud. He was so deeply humiliated. And I was too.”Says Terkel today, as he recalls hearing this story for the first time, “Well, I’m saying, ‘This is great!’ [He cackles.] ‘I gotta get that goddamned interview!’ Of course it was moving! But to me, my God, that fit! Just before another guy in the book, about the WPA and his humiliation. It fit right there! It was what I wanted, even though it was she, and even though she was deeply, deeply moved–as I was!
In a very loving way. “Eileen Barth” is Terkel’s wife.
“Ignorance, however–that there’s plenty of. It’s a hot commodity, not least because it looks a lot like innocence. “That’s the whole point of it too,” Terkel mused. “‘I don’t know history. So how can I be guilty?’
Beginning July 7, Monday night became folk night at the Blue Note, and “I Come for to Sing” became the granddaddy of the great American hootenanny of the late 50s and 60s.
