Focus 580; Autobiographical History

Good morning this is Focus 580 our morning telephone talk show. My name is Jack Brighton sitting in for a regular host David Inge. Our producers are Harriet Williamson and Travis Stansell and our director is Henry Frayne. Glad you could listen today. Until about 30 years ago women's history wasn't taken seriously as an academic field. During this hour focused 580 will talk with someone who pretty much founded the field. Our guest Gerda Lerner has accomplished a number of very important things in her academic career. Her books the creation of patriarchy and the creation of feminist consciousness have become classics in her 1997 book. Why History Matters was a bestseller. She helped establish women's history month as an annual observance and created a guide to resources on women's history for the U.S. Archives used by scholars across the U.S.. Gerda Lerner has worked almost her entire life as an activist and she says her life experiences made her work not just an occupation but an obligation. Her life before academics is the subject of her new book which we'll discuss during this hour. The book is fire weed a political author. Biography published recently by Temple University

Press in the book Gerda Lerner discusses her formative childhood experiences in Austria. Her flight from Nazi occupation in 1938. Her activism in the anti fascist movement in the US and later in the communist party and her subsequent disillusionment with Marxism. Her role in the civil rights movement and her aspirations as a writer. Which letter to scholarship and her role as a founder of women's history studies. There is much more in the book and we'll talk with go to Lerner during this hour about her personal history has informed her scholarly career and her lifelong struggle for justice. We should mention also that Gerda Lerner will be in Champaign-Urbana this Wednesday evening and will be speaking in the Center for Advanced Study. Miller comm lecture series 7:30 p.m. this Wednesday at the level faculty center in Urbana on the third floor and of the title of her talk a life struggle for justice. Gerda Lerner and her political autobiography far weed which we'll discuss during this hour as we talk with go to learn or you are invited in to into

the conversation. We welcome your questions. The number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line anywhere you can here is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5. If you're free to join our conversation and let's say good morning to Gerda Lerner who joins us by telephone. Hello hello thank you for the nice introduction Mr. Brightman. Well thank you so much for your time today. Oh it's an honor to be there. Well we're we're honored to have you. There's a lot I want to talk about in please feel free to direct us in any any way you'd like. I have a few basic questions but you know we can we can take the conversation anywhere that suits you. I you know fading away a little bit. OK I'll try to speak up better. OK. Yes. You say in the book that you couldn't write this story in till very recently. Obviously many parts of the story are traumatic and I think you acknowledge they were very painful to recount. But my question is why was it

important for you to write it. Well first of all you know I'm not a historian and historians are always occupied with documenting the past and verifying the past. And as I'm getting older I have the same impulse to make sure that my own life is recorded you know in the full realm the size of it is its experience and I thought I could do that better than could. Strangers that would look in the records in the archives later and have a series and I wanted to do that. And also I I feel that way. My own experience as a sort of person of the old left

who then went on to make it sort of an impact on society that that's something that should be acknowledged and not hidden. Yes well there are a lot and so many chapters in your life that are worth exploring in terms of even the things the issues that we're dealing with today. Right. I think that's true and I I have a very strong feeling that you know I spent many years as a teacher and and the young people today have a very short historical memory. If any of you know 20 years 40 is seems to them that's history. And I think it's very important for young people to understand what the generation of their grandparents lived through and what our experience was.

So they say that's a very personal motivation. I have four grandchildren and I'm very close to them. And I guess that have an impact on me too. I think also it's very interesting to read about your experiences when you were very young and sort of finding the places where you where a sense of injustice can originate. Well I have had you know an unusual experience for me which is not shared by native born Americans but it is rather unusual for immigrant Americans because most of us come here or came here to try to escape some sort of persecution and injustice in our country it's of birth you know. And I had the

experience of being raised in a very privileged comfortable caring household you know and then from one day to the next being redefined by other people in such a way that everything was taken away from me. And I I had to confront life. Not just says of being on the privilege but below even the discussion of privilege because what the Nazi government did. In Austria and much faster than they had counted in Germany was to remove you know all. If you were Jewish you were forbidden to have any employment whatsoever. You were excluded from schools and universities. You were

your assets were frozen if you had any if the family had assets and then a few months later we were simply destined to be expropriated and then finally you know several years later we killed that with it. So but in my case emigrating at that time I lost my citizenship and I think its very important to know what an utterly traumatic thing it is to be deprived of citizenship because it means you are no longer a human being any anything can happen to you and nobody cares you have nobody that you can appeal to you know. And when you have that experience and you survive it you learn certain things from it and from a bad from a book.

Yes in reading your account of the Anschluss in the reaction of so many people in Austria It strikes me that sometimes goodwill between human beings can be a very fragile thing or at least that intolerance of the other power that's defined were so it can can service very quickly. Well that's that's the bad lesson. You know that's a terrible lesson that when societies tolerate intolerance and foster it and when they fall to the hatred of one group or another you know then otherwise decent human beings just fall in line. And that's a very frightening experience when it happens to you personally when you go to school and your schoolmates don't talk to you anymore. You know and you have friendships with people and they just drop the Alaca hot potato they don't want to be near you they don't want to be seen the at you.

Well I was imprisoned as a hostage for my father who had left the country who had fled the country. And when I came out of prison one of my best girlfriends from school who was a Gentile. Heard about it and wanted to show her friendship but she didn't want to be seen with me. OK so she met me a few blocks away from my house and walked with me to school but a few blocks away from the school she said hey behind you go ahead and I'll go in later you know. Yeah that's the kind of thing that hurts you more perhaps and even outright you know outright violence. And that made a very lasting impact on me that that experience because it showed me how

powerful social definitions are. You know and the definition where you define a group as deviant or non-human or below human dignity or whatever and then you act on that. I mean you can only commit injustice one way or the other. And when I began to study this and. When I began to work on the history of women sudden I realized that women had been defined as a group to be the AZA of men and had been as a group discriminated against for thousands of years. And there was no more just than the kind of redefinition I am the way and when I was in Austria. When you were you were arrested and imprisoned in Austria as you mentioned and in underwent a very horrible time there. I guess I'm wondering

how did that experience affect your political convictions. Well I think that's one thing that is important for us to understand today when people are. When people are unjustly persecuted and when that terrorize and when they are. Unjustly imprisoned. That doesn't make them better life loving people that make them angry it makes them you know makes them less tolerant of other people because the anger and resentment is something that builds up. And I think it is kind of radicalized you and I think we need to understand that in the relationships that we have that our nation has with other people in the world. We're not seen you know

we're we're not seen objectively. When people are victimized they don't feel they have a very full focus on their victimization. And that's the way I felt I felt I felt I was unjustly imprisoned and I had to focus on surviving it. And. The people who I was imprisoned with the other fellow prisoners were very politically oriented and that made me more political. And when when you were let out essentially it seemed in reading your account of it you were not. You did not you know make you shy about expressing your point of view it did not make you give up in your quest that's contrary I think I got stronger out of it. I got more courageous because I had learned that I could survive the persecution. And as such you know I don't know.

Yes it did make me more I think more self-confident and also more and more dedicated to eradicating this kind of fascist regime. You know I was very very I felt very strongly about that I felt that I had to do more than just save my own life. You know so it it made me more politically committed. I would say to being an anti-fascist at the time I love that doesn't mean anything to people today but it meant being against regimes that were you know the prosecuting and killing people just for who they are who they were born. We have a couple. Also talk with let's include him in All right do you know him. Yes I would like to speak with you. Let me take a moment though to reintroduce our guest. If you have joined us in the last few minutes we're talking with Gerda Lerner. She's professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and she is

one of the founders of the field of women's history in the United States. And we're talking with her about her book fire weed a political autobiography published by Temple University Press. She'll be in Champaign-Urbana to speak this Wednesday evening at 7:30 at the Levy's faculty center a Millikan lecture. In the meantime we have a couple callers and would welcome others 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 around Champaign-Urbana toll free elsewhere. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. This is a listener in Urbana on line number one. Good morning. Yes good morning. What a pleasure to have you here in town. I read some of your books and was very awakened by them all myself and that I was very curious when you talk about being in prison in Austria. And I was curious at what age and I wasn't aware that who

was picked up by the Nazi government and put in prison ever got out. So if you don't mind sharing that unpleasant time more details. Well I was I celebrated my 18th birthday in jail. So that answers your question about the age. And yes there were there were people who were let out. But only if they were not politically active. OK if they were arrested just in the street arrests or something like that or random you know random arrests for no particular reason they were let out. I mean the Nazis expected them in many cases it worked that these people would then be intimidated you know. And in my case I was never even and

I was an accused of anything I was a hostage. They wanted my father to come back from abroad. They were hoping to expropriate him faster than they could do it otherwise and they probably also wanted to. They would have jailed him. That's why he escaped that he had been warned that he was on the list to be arrested. I mean did you have siblings and a mother. What did you have siblings and yeah I had a sibling. I have a sister and my mother was arrested with me. So my mother and I were the hostages. My sister was just 12 years old of the day let her go. It was a horrific tine and I thought. As far as you know I think you have to understand that it's not like in the movies you know all in all conditions on the oppression and the oppressive regimes. There are

all kinds of levels of story. You know some people are tortured some people are not. Some people are sentenced the unjustly for long sentences. Others when they never even tried are have never have a day in court. You know it's all very arbitrary. Part of it is the ABA traveling necessary terrible. But you know thank you for your question. Your description of trying to get out of Austria is another harrowing experience where the layers of bureaucracy were essentially I think you know as you describe it they were they were essentially perfecting a system of torture you know for people who. Sensually were making stateless in the world if you could talk a little bit about trying to trying to get away from Austria and essentially eventually to the United

States where again there were layers of bureaucracy in not a lot of sympathy. Well you know that that's an interesting question because I learned something in the writing of the autobiography that I didn't know about this because the way in which we were. We were let out of jail my mother and I and forces before we left. We had to sign a statement that we would immediately leave Austria which was in effect making us sign on the order of the partition and renunciation of OS's chip. So it's no small matter. You're not accused of any crime you haven't done anything wrong. And the next thing you know is you have a choice either you rot in jail for the rest of your life or you sign a piece of paper. And we signed it you know. What was what were you going to do. And then we found

that and they made us report to the police every week. And we found that there were you know of half a dozen papers that you had to get before you could leave to leave legally and to leave illegally you would be shot on sight if they caught you. So it wasn't like a small matter and each time we came to the police station they abuse the sinc threatened us and told us the next time if we want gone they were gonna send us to a concentration camp. So it was very very unpleasant. And what I learned when I wrote the this in my own memory you know I thought I would read up a little bit on the recent historical scholarship in Austria about that period. And lo and behold I find out that about two weeks before we came out of

jail the Nazis had installed a new person to handle what they called the expropriation of the Jews of Vienna. OK. And apparently the idea was that when they had. Expropriated the Jews of Germany it took them six years and they still haven't done it. They had Still there was still millions of them in Germany at that time. I'm talking about 1938 and the person they put in charge of this was a young as SS lieutenant who had no record of any sort and his name was. And it turns out it was one who designed every bureaucratic obstacle with a clear viewpoint that if it tortured people sufficiently and humiliated them daily and made them stand in line for evah and never gave him the papers that they needed they would leave voluntarily.

And I had not known that. And it is in fact very interesting because when he was tried as a war criminal he was tried for his you know for his handling of the post. The Final Solution and he claimed that he was just an instrument carrying it out in fact. Fact he was the one who designed the system that then was returned back to Germany and used to enable the Germans to do the Final Solution thing that man. But people don't know what that is sure they meant the final solution. Killing every Jewish man woman and child that they could catch whether they would not. There are a bunch of chapters that go between that point and in the point where you arrive in the United States and you know we're almost there mid point

already and obviously we're not going to able to cover everything but I do want to ask you to sort of talk about the next the transition to the United States where again there were layers of Europe. Credit problems to deal with. And you were essentially very very lucky and one of the very few people who were actually able to make the trip to the United States and it was because of the efforts of your fiance and his family who had already arrived here. Yeah well it was you know if you can only simply say that the United States government at the time did nothing special to save the lives of any Jews which is very different from a policy that was pursued later during the Cold War where we instituted all kinds of measures to rescue people who faced death and persecution but we had a system of immigration based on the immigration law of

1924 and it was a system based on quotas. Every country had a quota that is. And the quotas favor. No I know all of them. And West some European countries. So if you were born and and Germany of France you had a better chance of. Quite a number that would allow you to enter the United States. But if you were born and Hungary. My mother was when she applied for immigration she was told that there was an 8 year waiting period. Well we didn't have atheists you know. So at this very very discouraging. But the important thing is you know some some people got into the country and I think we're eternally grateful for that. But many of your family did not get into the country.

No I could never bring my family over. I tried very hard but I could not. And you knew what was essentially happening in Europe that the war was descending that you know we know that we know that we expected the war to break out. We didn't know when but we expected it. You know daily or every month. And it was a very difficult time. But anyway. To come back to the to the question of the definition you know. Yeah I think it's very important that people think about what we are doing when we talk about groups of people and define them in one way or another. You know whatever they are whatever the group is that we pick on sometimes we pick on welfare mothers. And we say well from others this is that but that's not what they are. They're individuals and each has a story and each is a human being. We say Muslims or terrorists or whatever.

Yeah right. In other words I think that is to me is really something I very deeply believe in and that we have to stop dividing people and to the good ones and the bad ones of them and you know that's that's the that's the ultimate evil wants to do that. It doesn't matter who the target group is. I feel that very strongly. When you arrived in the United States there there were a number of things that happened obviously that. Well he was taking us through the anti a book right. I'm trying to I don't know if we can get you know I don't think so either. But I did. When I talk about you know that the story of your second husband Carl Lerner who was a director in film and er and your experiences in Hollywood with with yeah the labor movement in the Communist Party in the conflict that happened you know during the 40s Well we were in Hollywood. I mean we came to Hollywood because Carl had been unemployed

like many artists he was a stage director in New York you know and at the time there was a big depression and all that. The federal government had a program called the Federal Theatre where they use unemployed gave work to unemployed actors and directors and then after a while that was abolished as being too expensive. And so he was unemployed. And in order to find work some of his former friends had gone to Hollywood and had found work in the film in the street and they urged us to come there and we did that. And at the time we came to Hollywood. The film industry was just on the going a big change they had. Then they had operated for a long time on a basis of no unions at all or what they called company unions that it's unions that were heavily influenced

and corrupted by the company and did whatever the company told them to. And just before we got there there had been several unions the screenwriters and the Screen Actors Guild that had progressive leadership and that has fought the studios to really get better conditions. And what I'm talking about is kind of ironic because at the time what they were fighting against was the 70 and 80 hour workweek you know. Yeah but we're working forever. They weren't being paid overtime and they have to be accessible for their jobs on almost an unlimited basis. And then when the unionization took place this was reduced to eight hour days with overtime pay and no and no obligation to work 70 and 80 hours a week.

The reason it's ironic is that right now we're back to some of the weeks in Hollywood again. But the pay is better. So the unions did accomplish something and we were involved in that. We got very involved in that struggle for unionization. My husband was very active in that and we went through all kinds of you know struggle with the union and then a few years later you know you had a cold war beginning and and the climate was changing and the various committees started investigating Hollywood for the for communist influence and what it really amounted to. But the real agenda was union busting to get the progressive unions on the control of people

who didn't believe in and and unions that help the working people. And so then this was the period when that was the blacklist in Hollywood and people were again being defined as the other. Now they were the Reds in Hollywood. And it's interesting that with all the investigations they never found any. You know they never found the single film that they could say was the film that was subversive except one film that was made at the urging of the State Department during the war. I think it's called The Song Song of Russia or something. It was pro Russian and that was while we were you know while the Russians were fighting and we were allied with them. So but they never were able to prove any film that had been influenced in a war of way

and the whole idea that writers or actors or directors could influence the content of a motion picture was absurd to anyone when the pictures were made. They're all very heavily influenced by the producers and this is a constant check on every every shot and every line that spoken by numbers of people. So even if somebody wanted to smuggle in some verse of messages it would be almost impossible. So we went through that struggle and I can't really talk about it in detail because you have to read the background but I describe some of the. I worked there and and my husband was blacklisted and that meant that we were back to square one we couldn't get war.

It was a parallel to your experience in Austria in many ways wasn't it. Well it felt like it. To me it felt like it. To me it was from the parallel totally because the intent. You know the intention wasn't to kill people. Right. So it was we survived that. But it was very difficult it was a difficult period we had a young family then. And then Karl went back to New York and built up a very fine reputation as an editor in New York and one of the ironies is I mean he was the film editor that made 12 Angry Men. The film that's a classic you know everybody has seen it with Henry Fonda and he had a very good career in Hollywood and in New York. And after after we went through a very hard patch before you know doing the blacklist. And I also write about my

life as a writer I've tried to become an American writer from the time that I came to America. That was also the sort of career you know. I want to stop for a moment. OK. Give you a chance to have a life yeah I mean questions. Sure audience. Well let me just take a moment then to reintroduce you our guest today is Gerda Lerner. She is professor emeritus of history at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She's had a long career in the academic field of women's history as one of the founders of the field and her books are very well known we're discussing her latest book fire weed a political autobiography. And let me mention again that Gerda Lerner will be in Champaign-Urbana this Wednesday evening at 7:30. She'll be giving a lecture at the levels faculty center. This is a Millikan lecture I should be talking about her book and that is free and open to the public. And also I'll

mention the phone numbers one more time we have just about maybe 12 minutes left during this hour 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 around Champaign-Urbana and elsewhere 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I actually did want to ask you to talk a little bit about your activism during this period especially with the Congress of American women in how you learned through that experience how real people organize as opposed to simply theorizing about organizing. But I mean I think that that was very important. And as I look back on my life I found that it's more important than I realize because you know I was. If if I was always interested in pursuing academic study. But of course it was made impossible by the experience of fascism. And I graduated from

the equivalent of high school in Vienna with the Nazi commission examining me one day after I got out of jail you know. So I didn't manage that. But then for 20 years I couldn't go back to school because I was too poor and I had to work from a living family and song. So when I look back on. Those he is those 20 years in which most of the time I was active in the community where I lived. Whichever community that was and I worked on the level of a very simple neighborhood organizer and since I always was centrist as in women I was always interested in organizing the women that were my neighbors and they were mostly Housewives of various kinds and I was active after the war and getting childcare established

and then getting a prekindergarten kindergarden program into the public schools. That was an issue and then we worked on it on issues like that. The price of meat that was enormously increased after the end of the war and we organized neighborhood meat boycott some brought the price of meat down. Things like that. And I could go on you know all of the various sects devotees I was also very interested always in peace the issue of peace and the control of nuclear weapons. And so I organized peace committees and I went around with peace petitions. I was involved in electoral politics in California and in New York. You know one of the lessons that you draw from this. This experience

still good. Well what I I mean when I think that I had I went through all that practical experience before I ever ended college you know and I entered college when I was when I was thirty eight years old as I'm on the graduate. And then I took me for they gave me some credit from my European training. So it took me four years to get a B.A. part time you know. And then I went from that to graduate school at Columbia and I went from the B.A. and I earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in three years and I had to do everything that everybody else do. So I was able to do it in record time. Because I had the motivation you know to me this was like the most wonderful joyous experience of

my life that I had the time to study and and but what I learned was that I would come in two classes. I never had a female teacher in college. And there weren't any in that department there was one teaching I think Byzantine history and that was it. And then I would be presented with the history of the past in which there were no women and I would ask them why. Why aren't you telling us what the women that are and if they answered at all they would say well they would they didn't do anything. And I know that that was wrong. I know from my own experience that if you wanted to change something in any community anywhere in the world you have to get the women to do it. When we get them. And I know that. So that drove me and the woman sisterly at the time. Women's History was not

recognized it didn't exist. Nobody know what it was. And in fact it was ridiculed and you know we're told it was a fad and it would go nowhere on. But the fact of the matter is that I felt that the people who were teaching me who had grown great respect for their knowledge but they only know half the story. You know. Yeah. So in that sense my practical experience was a great asset to me and helping to develop this field because I know by and the same way I wrote. I published a book in 1972 called black women and white America which was a cause a compilation of primary sources on the history of black women at the time I published that book. Every knowledgeable person in the field told me there was no such thing as a history of black

women. All right and I know that was because I had worked in arguments with black women for decades and actually worked with them in the community and I know they were active and I know they had done great things and then have to have done that in the past. Yeah there's a story you tell. About that I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about when you were organizing with the Congress of American women there were a couple of African-American women who were part of part of your group who who first it seems were didn't really respond in the way you thought that they might. And one of them seem shy in you know not exactly engaged in the you we're talking about probably very global issues that you were dealing with and you and you you had experience with them where you actually had one of the meetings in their house and that seemed to kind of change at least your notion

of who they were and how maybe you should be approaching the issue of gradually changed our racist attitude. Yeah. I mean they didn't never call us on it but they just held back. You know they came to a meeting and they would participate in the discussion very very very modestly very little and in fact only white women. Made comments about why didn't they participate in the law and why they shy. It's us all their fault you know. I'm from a point of view that was added to it. And then we had the census then where one of the black women brought a raffle book of raffle tickets to sell and it was for children to go on some a camp in the in her community and we were very on enthusiastic about this.

We wanted to change. You know we wanted to work for world peace and we wanted to work for more feminist goals of the equality of women and so on. And then one of the women said My children need to go to camp this summer. They can't wait. Which was very I mean that was a hard hitting thing to say. And so we took stills raffle books and after she left we had the first time and confronted the fact that we weren't really responding to their concerns. Whenever they said something about their community it wasn't of interest to us. And that's how we come we recognize that in a way that was a racist thing we were doing. And so we decided to go to the home and then it turned out that they were far from these women were extraordinary community leaders. One of them belong to something like 15 organizations. They were they had leadership

positions in their community. They were middle class highly educated women. They were extremely talk. And had a lot to say but they just weren't going to do it until we changed our attitude and they became very very close friends. When I left saying all of this one of them gave a party for about 80 people in her house. For me a farewell party. And I learned a lot from that because that's something that you know that's the kind of unconscious racism that people project. And that hurts that hurts African-American people when it's done to them. And I thought that you know like I thought I was incapable of doing such a thing. But yeah. Was that something that you have to be conscious off. So it was experiences like that and that that made me interested in asking about the history of black women you know

and at the time when we were just struggling for recognition of the history of women altogether this was considered of very odd interest. People didn't think it was going to go but this is my bestselling book Black women and white America is still alive and well and has been used to a sense of family all over the nation. We just have about two minutes left. There's so much more we could talk about. Or get some. Curious about your assessment of where we are in terms of women's history if you know after some 30 years and efforts of you and many other people. Well I think we have made a lot of progress in recognizing women's history. We have instituted courses and graduate programs and women's studies programs in many many universities and women's history is being taught on

the high school level and it's even being taught on the elementary school level. And some of the basic tests that are being given to schoolchildren now include some questions and woman's history which is very important so on. I think it's been one of the areas where we have made the greatest progress and the women smoke. And the fact that we have Women's History Month and women's history days and that we give prizes in the schools all those things are very significant. I think that we have not done too well in general and maintaining. Strong commitment to the teaching of history as a whole in the school system. I'm talking about K.. You know of the K-12 I think many many places.

They use social studies instead of history courses and so on. So that's that's good. But women's history as an academic field is really been very well established and it's growing and it is a field that many students now take as a minor field whatever their other interests so that they have a Chenda prespective in their work. And also what I find very gratifying to many people that go into government services education or even in corporate administrations have found that having training in women's history is very helpful for them. Because it teaches you that. To to to be sensitive to the issues that women are raising and also the injustices perpetrated still against women as a group. So I think we have we have made very good progress

and I think it's irreversible progress today. You know I think people expect to hear about women when they hear about men. And that certainly was the case 30 years ago 40 years ago. We'll have to leave it there since we're out of our time but I want to say to folks if you're in Champaign Urbana on Wednesday evening our guest Gerda Lerner will be speaking at the levels faculty center 7:30 p.m. on the third floor heard a lecture in the Millikan series entitled A life of struggle for justice Gerda Lerner and her political autobiography fire weed and the book fire weed is published by Temple University Press you should be able to find that in bookstores and libraries. It's a great read very dramatic story. And so I'd highly recommend it to you or to learn a thank you so much for talking with us 12. Thank you Mrs. Broughton I really enjoyed the opportunity. So that helped to see a lot of people at the lecture. Very good. Thanks so much.