Nick Bonanno oral history interview, 1995-08-29

CHRIS LUTZ: September 13, 1995. This is an interview with Nick Bonanno in Atlanta, Georgia, by Chris Lutz. Bonanno, can you tell us when and where you were born?

NICK BONANNO: Um. New York City.

LUTZ: Uh huh

BONANNO: Manhattan, actually, August 3, 1927.

LUTZ: 1927, the same year as my dad. Um.

BONANNO: I'm 68 this past August.

LUTZ: Okay, congrats! Happy Birthday a little late.

BONANNO: Yeah.

LUTZ: What part of Manhattan?

BONANNO: Actually, I grew up in the Village, what is now called Greenwich Village, the lower West Side, uh, Thompson and Prince, Bleeker and, um, Carmine Street. Ahh, Grammar school, St. Anthony's on Sullivan Street. And…by the way, it's our famous artist. Uh, that's [inaudible] that's his neighborhood. 00:01:00As a matter of fact, some of this stuff hanging on the wall, you can see the street names I've mentioned. And, uh. Uh.

LUTZ: Uh, You went to St. Anthony's.

BONANNO: High School, LaSalle Academy, Second Street and Second Avenue. We were called the Bowery Boys because that's in the area that's called, that used to be called the Bowery. And, uh then, uh, from there, two years at New York University in the School of Commerce. And that's as far as I got in school.

LUTZ: Mmhmm, You went to a union school though?

BONANNO: Oh, later on, much, three or four years, three years, four years after 00:02:00NYU, I spent those four years in the garment trade as a sewing machine operator

LUTZ: Okay. What d…

BONANNO: Making, first, ladies' jackets -- what we used to call 'reefers,' but not the kind of reefers you think of today. You didn't smoke them, you wore them. Then, making ladies' dresses, fairly high priced dresses for the time, back in the middle forties, the late forties. Then, the school you mentioned, uh, from 1950, May 1, 1950, David Dubinsky saw, uh, the diminution of, aah, leadership coming out of various portions of our society. And so he set up a, um, school which he called an Institute. People called it Dubinsky's Institute, Dubinsky's Academy, and stuff like that. And I was a member of its first class. 00:03:00And, uh, I applied, and was accepted and spent a year: aaah, six months in school listening to lectures and history of the union and so on. People like Eleanor Roosevelt came to speak to us. And, it, it made quite a stir. It was a novel idea, and it worked because many of the graduates become…became vice-presidents, as a matter of fact the president of the union today, of UNITE, is a graduate of that training institute. So many, many ILG vice-presidents were graduates of that Institute, so it was, it was an idea that worked. And it was one of Dubinsky's other great ideas. Uh, uh.

LUTZ: Was Dubinsky a man you admired?

BONANNO: Yeah, very much so. He was very tough. I, I was able to work with him quite closely on various, uhhh, strikes in the South. Because after the school, they sent me to the South. Aaah.

LUTZ: Was that 1950, '51?

BONANNO: '51. Well, my first trip was the end of the year 1950. The school year was from May, uhh, to April. The way it was structured, we went to school for three months, and then out in the field for three months, then back in school, and back. And, um, my two trips -- one was up to Chicago. And it was very interesting. I'd never been to the Midwest. Matter of fact, I'd hardly ever left New York State. I'd gone over to Jersey.

LUTZ: That's kind of like going out of the country, isn't it? [laughter]

BONANNO: Yeah, right, going across the Hudson was like leaving town. But I went up to Chicago and spent a good deal of time, three months, in the Midwest. As a matter of fact, it was very interesting times because Scott Lupus was the Whip of the Senate, the Democratic Whip of the Senate, and a guy by the name of Dirksen beat him, aaah Everett Dirksen,

LUTZ: Yeah

BONANNO: Who became the Republican leader of the Senate. And it was interesting to be up there. The politics of Chicago, the Daley machine, and so on and so forth. But, I also spent three months in the South, which was -- I don't want to call it 'culture shock,' but it was a different experience

LUTZ: Yeah

BONANNO: From downtown Manhattan.

LUTZ: What first struck you about the South?

BONANNO: Well, I liked the people. And, of course, I tried to understand the custo But my first assignment – ah, the regional office was not Atlanta then. And Atlanta was a small ci….tow….city -- I don't want to call it a town. But our regional office was in Chattanooga. And Chattanooga was, you…you know --

LUTZ: Chattanooga [laughter]

BONANNO: Chattanooga is still Chattanooga. But from there, they sent me -- I came to Atlanta, and I visited Atlanta, and I worked in Atlanta. But then they sent me in in to the exterior area, sort of, and one of my first assignments was in Mississippi. I didn't understand the people, and they didn't understand me. 00:07:00I had a -- I still have a 'Yankee' accent, I guess, but you should'a heard it then. And, uh, when some young lady said to me – well, I was trying to get her to join the union in a house visit -- She said 'I'm a [inaudible] public life. I didn't know what she said. Public life was working in a factory. And a [inaudible] meant she had had it. She didn't want it anymore; and, therefore, she didn't have to join the union. But I guarantee you, she didn't leave the shop. She was just wanting to get rid of me.

LUTZ: Strange. Um. Well.

BONANNO: I spent about six months, um, after that back in Mississippi. But I went back to New York to graduate. And, frankly, I I when I heard that I was 00:08:00coming south permanently, because they had requested that I come back, I quit.

LUTZ: Really?

BONANNO: Uh, yeah. This put the whole program into a tizzy, not because I was so good at it, but I was supposed to be the student response, and the programs had been printed with my name in it. I had been elected by the class to make the response from the students. As a matter of fact, I have the recording somewhere in the house of that. Uhhh….

LUTZ: That speech?

BONANNO: Uh, yeah, and they also elected a committee to write the speech, which I wouldn't give the way they wrote it. I mean, it was really not--It was not called for, but it was a rabble-rousing kind of thing. I, I didn't mind rabble-rousing a little bit but --

LUTZ: You see yourself as more low key? [laughter]

BONANNO: Yeah, right, and I didn't know whether they elected me to make the speech so that they could use me. They didn't want to take the brickbats that would come of it. I told them that I didn't want to come south. I had no reason to want to come south. My family was all up north, and I didn't mind leaving New York City, but we had a whole area in Pennsylvania and in New England, and I really wanted to go there. And I had other arrangements in the city that I didn't want to completely cut off, you understand? I was a young boy. I was twenty-three, twenty-two, something like that. I just had, um, reservations about being forced into something like that. But when I asked, 'Why are you sending me to the South?' They said, 'Well, you've got a car. You own your own car.'

LUTZ: [Laughing.]

BONANNO: See, what I didn't tell you was that I worked in a garment factory, but I was making a lot of money. I was making -- The last paycheck out of the garment factory, I worked for an outfit called Matthews and Kadesky, 557th Avenue. And the last paycheck out of that factory was $175 a week, and we are talking about 1950. Taxes were low. I lived at home. I had no family, and I could afford a car. I traded in a Chevrolet for $600 or something like that. I could get a new car, and I did have my own car. When they told me that I would have to leave the city and leave the job, which was okay with me, I left, because -- in school, we had no pay. We had nothing. We got $40 a week on the road, and out of that, we had to pay our hotel or motel or rooming, whatever 00:11:00arrangements we had. Then when we graduated, we would get the munif…munificent sum of $60 a week, plus expenses. And expenses on the road were seven and a half dollars. And out of that seven and a half dollars, you paid your motel. I mean. It. It just.

LUTZ: It sounds like Georgia State today [laughter]

BONANNO: What? It's like Georgia State.

LUTZ: It's like Georgia State. That's not real high.

BONANNO: No, it was kind of low. So I said to hell with that, I'll go back to my job. I was very comfortable, and I'll do, you know -- I got a call from my father that day when I announced to the powers that be there at the school that I was going back to work at the shop. And my father called me, who -- My father was a business agent for a Local 89. It's an Italian-American -- an Italian 00:12:00dressmakers local, a very large local, an important local for the union. And he called me, and he said, 'What did you do, Nick?' I said, 'What do you mean, what did I do?' He said, 'Well, Dubinsky called -- Hannah Haskell' --who was Dubinsky's secretary -- 'she called me, and I've got an appointment up there at 3:00 o'clock.' I said, 'Well, maybe it's about you.' He said, 'You must have done something.' I said, 'Oh, well, I'm going back to the shop.' He said, 'After spending a year?' I, I, you know 'Yeah.' And I told him how unfair it was because as a New York guy, I was supposed to go close in one trip and far away another trip; and I took two far trips, and it shouldn't have made a 00:13:00difference, and all kinds of stuff. He said, 'Don't do anything until I see Dubinsky.' I told him, I said, 'They're going to send me out there. I can't get home but twice a year or some such thing. I'll just go back to work, work something out that way.' He went to his appointment with Dubinsky, and he came upstairs to the where the school was at 1710; and Dubinsky was on the fourth floor, and we were up on the sixth floor. He said, 'It's all settled, Nick.' And I said, 'What do you mean, it's settled? Nobody's talked to me.' He said, 'Ah, that's all right. Dubinsky and I negotiated.' He said, 'He started with two trips a year.' I said, 'Six.' We settled on four. You'll have four trips a year back to New York.' Then, he said, Dubinsky told him, 'Look, a year or 00:14:00two seasoning there. Then, we'll bring him back to New York -- or bring him back, you know, closer to New York.' So that satisfied Pop. And I don't know that it satisfied me, but I said, 'Okay, I'll give it a try.' I got in my car, and I came South. And that's, uh, forty-five years ago.

LUTZ: [laughter]

BONANNO: A couple of years after coming down, I had an opportunity to go back, and I turned it down. And I got used to the area. I got used to the people and the custo And I could see the potential and the possibilities. And by the time I was twenty-seven, I was an Assistant Director.

LUTZ: The youngest ever, weren't you?

BONANNO: Yeah. The youngest. And, uh, then, I had my differences with directors. One of the directors was Al Kehrer. I was his assistant for ten years, and we 00:15:00had a-- and I won't go into it -- but we had our differences, and he left. And when he left, I was the assistant, and they brought in another director because of, uh, because of the things that Al and I had -- The other director, as history will record, was not ready to be a director. And so I helped him for a year and a half. Then he told me I couldn't work with him anymore. So I went to work for the President of the Union, a fellow by the name Lou Stolberg, who had taken Dubinsky's place when he retired. And I worked, actually, for about three and a half years, my office was in New York, and my family was in Atlanta, and I traveled the rest of the country. I was Associate Director of a Department 00:16:00called Central Organizing. And, uh.

LUTZ: Did that mean that you were in charge of the organizers?

BONANNO: I was, I was co -- I was associate director. There was a director. But, yes, we reported directly to Stolberg. We reported directly to the President; and anywhere we went, we had his imprimatur as an organizer. You know, we did that…..I did that for about three and a half years, and then I was called in and sent -- asked to go to Baltimore to help the vice-president who was ill, Angela Bombachi, and I thought I was going to move there because I became Associate Director there of that region. When I got there, she went into the hospital and, ahh, ahh, came back out. I had what amounted to a lovefest. I mean, she was a great gal, a great organizer, a wonderful woman, but she was 00:17:00up in years, you know, in her seventies. And she treated me like the, like the son she had, you know, and we got along real well. But I was there maybe six months, and then I was called in by the President, Stolberg, and told to come to Atlanta and take this office over because the director at the time and the assistant director at the time, [tape skips] so it became October of 1969. So that's how many years is that, twenty-five.

LUTZ: Yeah. Something like that, yeah.

BONANNO: Or twenty-six. And I've been Director here ever since.

LUTZ: Wait a minute, because I want to go back. You are not going to get off this easy. I am going to go back to your youth, now. Um, tell me about -- Let's go all the way back to your childhood and work our way up again. Tell me about what growing up in the neighborhood was like. Tell me about your mom and dad, too.

BONANNO: My mother was -- We were very poor people. We, uh, the first apartment –and I, I wouldn't call it an apartment. It was a flat. The first apartment was at 120 Thompson Street. It's still there. The building is still there. It was a five-story walkup. We lived on the top floor. In the wintertime, we didn't need an icebox. We didn't have a refrigerator. We had an icebox. And my mother would make Jell-o in the living room and keep the milk there because it was cold enough there. In the summer, we'd put ice in the icebox, when we could afford it. There was no hot water, and the heat that we had -- I remember 00:19:00that as a very young child, detesting what is now called 'progress,' because we went from a little coal stove, a pot-bellied coal stove, and in the winter, I would sleep in front of it in the kitchen. I had a folding bed that opened up, and I would sleep in front of the pot-bellied coal stove, and it would stay nice and warm for hours, and I could go to sleep before it got cold. But progress said that kerosene was better; kerosene stoves was cleaner, didn't make as much soot and all that kind of stuff. The only trouble with the kerosene stove was that it got cold fast, and I'd go to sleep freezing, yeah, in the wintertime. 00:20:00Around the top floor, when it snowed, it was like an icebox. I still remember that. I…we, then, when I was about twelve, moved to Carmine Street; my father's situation improved. My mother was a doll--She belonged to a doll, toy, and novelty workers union. My father was…is…that union's original recording secretary. And the only reason -- one of the reasons why he became secretary was he was active. He was an activist in organizing. He was called Horseman Bob because he could read and write a little bit of English, so the letters they wrote back and forth to the AF of L, uh, joining, getting themselves organized, he would read them and write them. And, uh, then, his factory went out of 00:21:00business or it moved to avoid unions. And, that's when he got into the dress industry in New York, which was quite big and still is. And, um, things were tough. Things were very bad. We were poor as church mice. I remember –what we called then…Today they call it "aid" or whatever. In those days, they called it home relief. Today, they call it welfare, uh [laughter] but we were on 'home relief,' and I don't mind telling anybody that it was not one of the nicest things to go stand in line some place for medical treatment or for stamps or whatever. We were…we were poor. We were poor as church mice. Things began to improve and, for my dad, he became a dress presser. That means 00:22:00pressing the dresses. It was hard work, a 16 pound iron, and not too bad in the wintertime when it was cold, but it was in the summer when you're pressing those things -- And he began to make a decent living. My mother stayed in the doll business. She was a dresser. She dressed dolls. Now, that may sound like play when you dress one doll. But when you've got to dress a gross of dolls, 144 dolls, you know, in a day, with pins in your hands, and so on -- But that's how they made their living. And that's how they supported me.

LUTZ: Did you have brothers and sisters?

BONANNO: Yeah, I had one sister -- I had a sister but she died in the hospital at birth. And, uh, so they really were hardworking people. And, as things 00:23:00improved, then, we moved when I was about twelve to Carmine Street. This was a great big -- It had a shower, hot water, steam heat, and a bell downstairs. It was a remodeled building, right across from Our Lady of Pompeii Church -- some people might know where that is, in the Village. And, um. that was really going uptown. Um, and, as a matter of fact, they could afford to send me to LaSalle Academy, which was a Christian Public School on Second Avenue, as I mentioned. And there was a tuition there. It was ten dollars a month. That was expensive. Um, but, eh, things improved for the family, and Dad became a presser, then he became an officer of the union, not that there was a lot of money in it, but it 00:24:00was a steady salary, it was a steady pay. The paycheck came in every week. There was no layoffs, and then, of course Mama worked, and I worked, too, in various jobs.

LUTZ: What was your first one?

BONANNO: First job -- moving tomato cans and olive oil cans off the sidewalk in front of a grocery store. For a nickel. I'd make a nickel a night, if that's what you call a job. First job, was at a place called J.H. Taylor and Company, and I worked there after school one summer and I was making seventy cents an hour, I think, or something like that, which was quite a bit. But I quit there to go to work for the City doing, um, surveys on the street. I figured out the 00:25:00two weeks that I worked for them, I made as much money as I made the whole summer for this Taylor and Company, so I quit there and took this other job. But then I worked on Wall Street collating, no glamorous job, but as a collator. In those days, no computers, they would put out the latest quotes on these stocks and bonds. As a matter of fact, the company's name was National Quotations Bureau. I don't know if they are still around, but they would print up the sheets, and we would get them, put them in boxes, with a roller finger, collate them, put them together. I did that and a few other odds and ends jobs, but I, I went to school, basically, and after school, at NYU, I worked in the 00:26:00garment industry. And, so, the first week, it was summertime, school was over with, and I passed by a factory. And at the time, I had been a counselor at a camp, too, for a children aid society, did a couple of summers with them. Believe it or not, you got sixty dollars for the season, aah, room and board, a dollar a day. And, but it was the work, it was interesting. I was involved with The Children's Aid Society on Sullivan Street. And I, I, I actually -- that wasn't a job, but I worked for another outfit, and my buddy got fired. That came up with… and when he got fired, I quit. I thought it was unjust. Maybe it 00:27:00was right, I don't know. I came back to the city that summer and went…saw a sign on Eighth Street and Broadway. It said, "Operator Wanted. No experience necessary." And I went in and met this guy, Louie, and he hired me. And the first week, I got no pay at all. Nothing. He just taught me how to thread the machine and run it, and then gave me some pieces to sew, and then gave me some actual -- The second week, he gave me five dollars for the week, five dollars. With it I bought a scissor. A whis… And the third week I went, and he said to me, 'Nick, I am going to double your pay. You'd better double your production.' I said, 'Wait a minute, Louie. I counted the tickets.' You know, when you do the work in the garment factory, they cut tickets, and each ticket has a value. 00:28:00I said, 'You gave me five dollars. I did twenty-three dollars worth of work. You mean if I do forty-four dollars, you are going to give me ten?' I said, 'That's not fair, Louie.' He said, 'Nick, I've got to count teaching you.' I said, 'Good-bye, Louie.' And I left, and eventually I got a job about a week later at Houston and Broadway in this reefer shop; a reefer is a little jacket. Do they still call it -- Do the ladies still call them reefers?

LUTZ: No, but there's that other association.

BONANNO: Yeah, there's that other association. And it was what was called a section workshop. Ahh, and, you made pieces, and then it got put together. And I worked on collars and cuffs, and I got twenty-five dollars a week. Time work, 00:29:00no piece work. Eventually, after a month or so -- I got [tape skips] -- was waning, and I was about ready -- school was about to go back into session. My father said, 'Aren't you going back to NYU?' And I said, 'Nah' –Look, I was eighteen, by the way -- I had just turned nineteen. I was going to turn nineteen in August. And maybe it was -- And you've got to understand, it was the war years. The wars were over. I, I didn't, did not go. I was not drafted because I went to, you know, September and the War was over in August, and I had flat feet. And they said, 'No.' They didn't want me. Then, I was going to college, and so they figured if they'd take me and they used me for a year, they 00:30:00would have to pay for my tuition. So he said, 'No, we don't need you.' And they were discharging all the boys coming back home. In a way, I wanted to go. I wanted to volunteer when I was seventeen. My father said, 'No, wait until you've gone to school, and then you can go.' Then, it turned out, they didn't take me. Um, it was disappointing. I really wanted the experience of going overseas, and, you know, everybody was jazzed up. But, uh, it didn't work out that way. So I went to work in this place and stayed there for about six months. And, well….then, I got laid off, seasonal layoffs. Garment industry, there's always seasonal layoffs.

LUTZ: What's the season that you get laid off?

BONANNO: Well, maybe, you do….in, in the winter, you are doing summer--spring 00:31:00and summer work. Okay? In the fall, you are doing summer --spring and summer stuff I mean, before, you are doing -- I mean, you are ahead of yourself, so that in the summer, you are working on the heavy wools, if you are in jackets. And, in, in the winter, you are working on the lighter stuff. And so there were always seasonal layoffs. In some type garments, there was more than just two seasons. You might have to be laid off for three seasons. And that's why, the reference I made about the paycheck kept coming in, even if it was small, it was a steady paycheck for 52 weeks.

LUTZ: Okay

BONANNO: In the garment industry, layoff is a problem. And it still is. Now, the problem is getting work altogether. But I stayed there, and I worked with my dad who worked uptown in, forty, in the dress industry. He said to me -- By 00:32:00the way, interestingly, it was a union shop I worked in, but I couldn't join the union.

LUTZ: How come?

BONANNO: He said the books were closed. And I, I kept bugging the business agent. His name was Paul Vikko, and it was Local 48, an ILGW shop and: 'The books are closed. The books are closed.' And, you' know, It was such a different atmosphere that I came to work in -- where the people wouldn't join the union -- Here we were trying to knock the doors down, because once you got the book, then, you had certain, um, benefits and protections. Ah, I mean, I still hadn't been able to get in. They stalled and delayed. 'Well, you got to learn.' 'You've got to --.' So Pop said, 'Well, you're laid off, are you, 00:33:00aren't you going back to school?' I said, 'No. Give me a year or so' -- And, so, he said, 'All right, come on uptown, and we'll work something out in the dresses.' Well, by that time, I knew how to, I knew how to run a sewing machine, but I didn't know how to make a dress. And the dresses I worked on were higher priced. They were not piecework. They were whole garment productions. That's different than piecework. Ahh, you made the whole garment. You put it all together.

LUTZ: Is that more of a, of a skill?

BONANNO: Well, it took more skill, yeah, because instead of just doing the one operation, you did many operations. For instance, before it was over with I could make a buttonhole, a handmade buttonhole. Now, when I say you did the whole garment, you didn't hem it. We had finishers, hand finishers to hem it 00:34:00and press it. But you did the body of the garment completely, practically. And so it took me a – At, at first, I went to work in this shop, a decent employer, and it was something like thirty dollars a week where I had left the other place, first time work; and I was apprenticed to a man who, um, had a gift in his hand of speed. You looked at him and you thought he was sleeping, but his hands were going a mile a minute. And he would make 350, 400 dollars a week. And, that was a lot of money in those days. It was in the middle forties, late forties. But I remember getting this thirty-five dollars, and I 00:35:00would do other things in the factory. I would go on the cutting table and help them put the chalk on so the cutters could see, and I did other odds and ends, but I was learning how to sew dresses. These were high-priced dresses, and I got my union book. I got my union [tape skips] and I got laid off because of this seasonal stuff. And then when we went back to work, the boss said to me, 'Well, Nick, I…you're doing fine. I'll give you sixty bucks a week, but I want you to work in the cutting room.' And I said, 'No, I've got my book now, Mathews, and I want my share of the work.' And I had a right to ask him, but I 00:36:00was a young punk kid. I mean, you know, I, I asked -- and the business agent came up. They were afraid I was going to ruin the garments, and this and that. And I said, 'Look, if I ruin it, I'll pay for it. Fair enough?' 'Fair enough.' So I started to work, and the first week, I didn't make no sixty dollars. I made thirty-five dollars, but before that season was over, I was up to seventy-five. And the next season, I started at seventy-five, and got to ninety, a hundred a week. And the next season, Um--

LUTZ: So you were doing very nicely.

BONANNO: Yeah, I was -- and I decided that that was the right thing that I did. I made the right trade. Um. And, as I say, the last paycheck was a hundred and seventy-five dollars, but it, it, it still wasn't satisfying. There was a 00:37:00little something I was looking for. I guess this is what --

LUTZ: This is what it was? [laughter]

BONANNO: This is what it was.

LUTZ: Did you want a challenge, maybe?

BONANNO: Yeah, I was nineteen, twenty years old. I was involved in politics. We had a political party. Um. It was called the American Labor Party, and then it became the Liberal Party in New York State. And, uh, we never won anything, but we helped get people elected. Well, we backed people like Roosevelt, Truman, and so on. I remember being in the shop working when Truman was elected. Of course, it was noon the next day, you know, until the last votes were counted. Yeah, I guess it was a challenge. I guess it was something more meaningful and something besides making dresses and money. Because, um, there was money to be made in the industry.

LUTZ: Well, tell me what got you involved in, ah, the Labor Party?

BONANNO: Well, the ILG and Dubinsky. Dubinsky and Hillman, you know, were very politically active, especially -- interestingly enough, it caused us a hell of a lot of trouble. Political activity manifested itself in the Truman presidency because Roosevelt wanted to pick Jimmy Burns from South Carolina as his vice-president. But the Labor people, especially Dubinsky, and Hillman of the Amalgamated, Sidney Hillman, um, opposed Burns because he was a Southerner and anti-union.

LUTZ: And a buffoon

BONANNO: Yeah. And, as a result, Harry Truman became president in 1944. When Roosevelt died, he became President. And Burns never forgave the unions, especially the Amalgamated and the ILG. Ah, he went back to South Carolina, became Governor, and passed the Right to Work law, and set up what is now called 'SLED' -- the State Law Enforcement Commission. And I know because they came after me physically. I had three or four years in the Carolinas as an organizer. And they were out after that little black-haired bagel bastard, come around me -- I know it -- because I struck many a shop over there, organizing. And he never forgave us. He never forgave us. And, I was, um...there was a 00:40:00hotel called the Wade Hampton, and I used to stay there. It was three dollars a day, and it had air conditioning. I was hanging out the window the day that Jimmy Burns introduced Eisenhower as a true son of the South -- I almost choked -- to the people in South Carolina on the Capitol steps. It, it was hard to take. Here was a guy who had been given everything. Burns was Secretary of State, Chief Justice, Governor, everything. I mean, the Democratic Party had given him everything but the Presidency, and he turned against it that way. And that's why he turned against it because he didn't get -- the final act was the Presidency. But I was…He just couldn't understand.

LUTZ: Vindictive man

BONANNO: He was -- And I'll never forget. One day I was flying up to New York, and we were going -- In those days, it was prop planes. I flew many a DC-3, but this was an Eastern flight, a two-engine, it was a newer version, not a DC-3. And Burns was up, of course, in what was first class in those days; and I was back in coach. And we were going through a storm. And I said – ah, I don't know, I'll never forget saying to myself, 'Jesus, I don't want to die with that son of a bitch.' [Laughter.] Of all the guys to have to go down with! [inaudible] That was a rough ride, but we got there okay.

LUTZ: [laughter] Well, now, let's get up to about 1950, and you are coming South. Were you married, then?

BONANNO: No, I got married in '57.

LUTZ: Was your wife from New York?

BONANNO: Yeah, a New Yorker. Yeah.

LUTZ: And, you eventually had four kids, is it?

BONANNO: Four. Yeah, well, we had four, four children. My first three are 'chosen' children. We, we didn't conceive. I guess I was traveling too much. And, uh, we went to an agency here in town and took a little orphan boy and brought him home, then another boy, then another, a girl. Then, interestingly enough, after I became Director down here, my wife got pregnant, and that was after sixteen, almost seventeen years of marriage. I guess you've got to be a director to conceive. And it's not because I was home more often. I just don't know. I think a lot of it has to do with stress and uncertainty. I guess until 00:43:00I became a director, my life was very unsure -- unsure of our financial situation or whatever -- But, anyway, we took – We had, we have four children.

LUTZ: Coincidentally, my three kids were all adopted, too.

BONANNO: Is that right?

LUTZ: Yeah. I go with the stress theory, too. [laughter]

BONANNO: We didn't use the word 'adopted,' we just said 'chosen.' I mean, it doesn't make any difference. Our children know the circumstances. But, it don't make any difference.

LUTZ: Right. Your children are your children.

BONANNO: Parenting is not birthing. Birthing is just an act of nature. Parenting is another kind of thing.

LUTZ: Parenting is being up at two o'clock in the morning wondering where he is with your car. [laughter]

BONANNO: Right.

LUTZ: And then trying to stay calm when he gets in at three.

BONANNO: I remember the first one, Nick, the oldest one. He's now 34, and he has two little girls, so I'm a grandfather. I remember being up at three o'clock in the morning with Dr. Spock's book trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with this kid. I know it's not pins stuck in his behind. [Laughter] But it felt like a, like a toy or a piece of mechanical equipment that wouldn't work, and I'm reading this book. I said, 'What am I doing.' It's really not colic or -- He just was crying, that's all. I had to comfort him, and when we did, he stopped crying, and when we put him in the crib, he started crying again. But, you know, that's, that's parenting, raising a child.

LUTZ: So now -- [Recorder off, then on.] Okay, so you come South. Tell me 00:45:00about how you started out to organizing the South?

BONANNO: The first, first campaigns [coughing] were an experience because I didn't understand the people, actually, the language almost. But you get your message across. I think people understood that we were telling them that this was for their benefit. You had a mission, and so on. And I think that got across, but it took three years before I won the first election.

LUTZ: Where was that?

BONANNO: Ah, over in South Carolina. And I had my best, my best years organizing in the Carolinas, South Carolina and also North Carolina because, 00:46:00actually, I was sent over there to direct the activities in the Carolinas, both Carolinas, which had a great deal of great potential. And when I got there, I had two locals, one in Hartsville, South Carolina, and one in Winnsboro, South Carolina. I had nothing in North Carolina, none at all. And we had the experience in Hartsville, where I walked in and I was servicing -- I was doing everything, organizing, servicing, directing the activities of the other people working in the area. And I was just a young man, a really young man. But they said the local wanted to lynch me. I mean --

LUTZ: You left off with the business agent there.

BONANNO: Yeah, that hadn't represented correctly some portion of the contract, they said. Whether that was true or not, I don't know. So we got it straightened out, and eventually, I struck that shop in Hartsville. It was Cotton City Manufacturing Company, for the first thirty-five hour agreement in the South. But it took a couple of years to bring it around.

LUTZ: Whatever you got straightened out -- you were alive. So they didn't lynch you. How did you get it straightened out?

BONANNO: We got the miscommunication corrected. It had to do with vacation pay or something. I don't think they understood that the Company had to take out certain deductions or whatever. But we got it straightened out.

LUTZ: So they didn't get you out by the tree? [laughter]

BONANNO: No, as a matter of fact, by that winter, we had a Christmas party, and 00:48:00I decided -- Interestingly enough, because one of the leaders against the union, and to tear me up, had been a, a lady who couldn't read or write. And the business agent, it was a female, had made the mistake in a heated argument with this person at a union meeting, saying that she was stupid. Well, she didn't mean 'you can't read or write.' I don't think she even knew that. But, later on, it was told to me, privately, that she couldn't read or write, and that she felt personally offended by it. And I don't think that the business agent meant it that way, and I think this person was from Philadelphia. She was not a Southerner. I don't think she understood the delicacies. And one of the ways I got over that is that in one of the meetings, I asked her if she didn't want to 00:49:00be Recording Secretary. And she thought that that was very nice of me, but she didn't have the time. And so, hah, her feelings were assuaged, and she felt vindicated. Ahh, but that was -- Then we had a shop in Walterboro, South Carolina where we struck for three months. We won an NLRB election, and struck. And I was -- I always tried to rent a facility, in this case, it was a house, directly across from the plant. And when we struck it, we opened up a headquarters in this house. And we always had a kitchen. And Walterboro was 00:50:00down near Charleston. It was plantation country. I was, I don't know, twenty-five, something like that. And I didn't know nothing from nothing. And my headquarters were always integrated, completely and absolutely. Whatever segregation took place was theirs. As far as the kitchen was concerned, as far as the headquarters was concerned, as far as the picket line was concerned, there were certain picket groups that were, you know, segregated, but not by me, not officially. They did it themselves because they were friends, and they went to the churches and so on and so forth. But the headquarters were--the kitchen, the proceedings, and the meetings, were completely integrated. And they told 00:51:00me, 'You're crazy. You can't do that.' And we did it. But we did it, and it worked, and we won the strike. We got a contract. We had for twenty-something years a shop there until the imports knocked it out of business.

LUTZ: What was the name of the plant?

BONANNO: It was Walterboro Manufacturing [inaudible], the one we were organizing; then it went through a couple of changes and eventually Country Miss owned the factory, but our industry, you know, is being racked by the imports and has been for twenty years. But it was an interesting thing because, at the end, I wanted to hold a victory party. And, unbeknownst to me, the armory at that time, after we made all the arrangements, wouldn't take an integrated 00:52:00party. So we had our party at the headquarters. And it worked. The people got along famously. Now, what they did after the picket line, and what they did in the factory, everything was [interruption--recorder off, then on]. The interesting part of this town was the mayor would send the police chief to the picket line. And we had a darn good picket line. Those girls -- I mean, they'd make men look like second-raters when it came to a picket line. Women can have great picket lines. And, uh, but the mayor would send the the police chief. And, the first time, I didn't know what to expect. I said, 'Well, let me go 00:53:00wash up.' I was sweaty and so on. And I…And he said, 'All right,' he said, 'Don't worry. Just come with the clothes you've got on. He just wants to talk to you.' And it took about ten minutes to get to the mayor's office from the picket line. And all the way over, the police chief started -- 'You like the way you're living? You better - Why don't you leave our women alone? Why do you come up here and stir this up? You better make sure that you don't have any proble The best thing to do is to leave town.' And so on and so forth. But we get to the mayor's office. And this got to be a not quite daily but almost several times a week. I'd get in and the mayor would say, 'Well, now, we want peace and quiet here, and I--'Oh,' I'd say, 'So do I. We are just demonstrating. It is an American's right to strike.', 'Well, okay, but we just 00:54:00want peace and quiet.' Then, the police chief would take me back, and all the way back, he'd say, 'Do you like the way you're living? You'd better get out of town.' So that was their way of telling me to go. It was –and, I…it was…I was young. I can tell you, I'd be up night and day, practically, because it was a twenty-four hour picket line. The headquarters was open twenty-four hours a day. And in the evening, it got interesting because the husbands would come around. And I'll never forget one morning, about one o'clock in the morning, I get a phone call at the place I was staying, in a hotel there. And he said, 'Are you there?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'Well, you better come down to the picket line.' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'It's getting hot down there.' I said, 'What?' 'Well, the rumor is that you've been 00:55:00arrested, and they were going to go break you out.' And I said, 'Well, all right.' I, I just. My pants were standing up in a corner, and I jumped in them. I went down for an hour, and I said, 'No, that's just a rumor.' Eventually, they did come down with Jimmy Burn's SLED people and, uh -- That's the SLED people making that noise. And she, they caught us between shifts in the afternoon. Not the morning. They caught us between shifts, not the morning. And they caught us between shifts, and they came in with about sixty guys, sheriffs, policemen. And if you know anything about state law enforcement guys in South Carolina, they wear little guns on their hips, showing, in a holster. They are like Wild West. And one of my old time, one of the old-time organizers 00:56:00of the ILG, Mary Cameron, she was running the shift at the time. And they came in, swooped in, aah, carried a girl across the line, a supervisor, and there was a battle royal. One of these SLED guys, years later, admitted that he still had the teeth marks on his breasts that one of the girls -- They broke a, they broke a girl's finger, but he had a--

LUTZ: That's very difficult to explain --

BONANNO: A remembrance of Walterboro's strike that he carried for the rest of his life. But it was -- We had about eleven girls in jail. We had to go get them out. I happened not to be on the picket line at the time. And it was what we considered a slow period, like three o'clock. They knew that. They came 00:57:00busting in there. But the girls did a good job. Eventually, we got a contract, and the place was a decent place. Even the newspaper guy -- his name was Whitman Smoak -- S-m-o-a-k was anti-union. And I became a good friend of his, and I think we earned each other's respect. But then I found out that his wife was a, a social liberal, and she read liberal magazines, and she was on my side. So if I came to town after that and didn't visit with them, they'd be highly 00:58:00insulted. I'd go there for coffee and lunch or something, and she'd usually be arguing on my side of the fence. But he would back right to work. But he also understood that right to work was not fair. Because we'd say, 'How can workmen -- How can it be fair if you have to represent people, and they don't contribute anything? You know, and they take all of the good for nothing. And this country wasn't built on something for nothing. This country was built on contribution by everybody in society.' And that's what small society in a plan. So we became respectable friends. I never convinced him, and he never convinced me.

LUTZ: It's funny that his wife would be--

BONANNO: He gave us a fair shot in the newspaper after that. The, the, the 00:59:00Walterboro News and Courier or something like that -- The Walterboro Standard, I think. Then his son took over. He passed away. I guess the mother is gone. But --

LUTZ: What hap…Where did you go after Walterboro?

BONANNO: Andrews, South Carolina. That was an interesting -- Oneida Knitting Mills -- I organized that; we won the election there pretty big.

LUTZ: You organized Oneida?

BONANNO: Yeah, yeah.

LUTZ: Tell me about it. [laughter]

BONANNO: Actually, we organized it before the Amalgamated got it.

LUTZ: Okay.

BONANNO: And, I led the organizing and the strike there. We had [sigh] long, long -- Oneida ran away from Utica, New York. They were union up there, ILG up there. And we thought that maybe we could work something out in Andrews. And it 01:00:00didn't work out, so that it was quite a struggle. And the town of Andrews –uh, the mayor, by the name of Raglan, Ragland, was anti-union. But we didn't know that, and we, we had the people. The people -- somehow the chemistry was great. I remember Hazel McLaughland, Peggy Swales, um, I mean 's name was Vincent Payne -- that wasn't a man. That was a woman. Great organizers. I mean, they worked for the factory, but they were great organizers. We'd meet -- I'll never forget we met one time at one of these ladies' houses, Peggy's house. The house wasn't big enough. We had a hundred people at the meeting. And so we met in 01:01:00the front yard. We'd use the porch as the podium kind of thing. I'd had a meeting at the Legion Hall or whatever it was. It was the first meeting. I spoke at the meeting, and we got ourselves organized. And the mayor came to the meeting. I was told that he was. And he was an elder of the church, I don't know -- the Baptist Church, or whatever. And I invited him to open the meeting with a prayer, which he did. And there were no restrictions. Anybody could speak. But after that he, he was working against us. We knew it. So I had this meeting out in the open at one of the ladies' houses, and we had maybe a hundred people out there. I knew we had more people than the Company had. The 01:02:00Company had their meeting in the school hall in Andrews. So after we did our business rather quickly, I said, 'Well, let's go join our sisters and brothers in the school hall.' So we walked over to this school hall. And they had all the business people and a smattering of workers. And we walked in. Well, the floor was wooden, and we did sound like a herd of cattle. But the mayor said -- His first blast was, 'You sound like a herd of cattle coming in here breaking up our meeting.' And that was his mistake, his first mistake. Then, he said, 01:03:00'Now, this meeting is for employees only.' So one of my people said, 'Well, what are all these businessmen doing here?' And, he said. I raised my hand. I wanted to speak. He says, 'You can't speak. You don't have the right. You're not an employee.' Well, I had some girls that could do a hell of a lot better job than I could. And he turned me down. So some of the other girls got up and made union speeches. They'd heard me long enough, and I just sat back. On the way out of the meeting hall, there was a long line of stairs down from the meeting floor. And some guy got -- some business man got overanxious. And he 01:04:00started -- He was on my back to push me down. Fortunately, one of the husbands of these gals -- Peggy's husband, I think he was, grabbed him off my back. And they were ready to beat his brains out. And, frankly, I wouldn't have minded too much. But, under the circumstances, I figured we'd better not. I said, 'No, don't do that. That's probably what they're looking for.' So we walked out of there peacefully. The next day, a committee of the workers went to the mayor's office and asked him, 'Why why don't, why didn't you let -- You spoke at our meeting. You had the right. Our meeting was open to everybody. And you wouldn't let our representative speak.' And he says, 'Oh, that Bonanno, 01:05:00Bananas, Cornstalk -- Whatever you call him. I had him checked out. He's a Communist.' Now, now you've got to understand the period of time. We are talking about McCarthy. To call somebody a Communist was a terrible thing. And they came back and told me the story. I said, 'By golly, we're going to get that son of a gun.' I got myself a lawyer, and we sued him for defamation of character, a hundred thousand dollars. Well, that was like a million dollars today, maybe more. But he owned two furniture stores, one in Lake City and one in Andrews. Well, I had the factory out -- I had a big local in Lake City, so we decided we were going to boycott him in Lake City and sue him in Andrews. Um. We won the election. We won the strike. We went back to work. We got a 01:06:00contract. And, then, we had a lawsuit. I remember the regional director was a guy by the name of Martin, at that time. We were still in Chattanooga, and I'd ask for the money for the lawsuit to put down -- I forget what it was, fifty dollars or something like that, but the costs. And the regional director thought I was crazy, but he sent me the fifty dollars under protest, or a hundred dollars or whatever it was. And I said -[interruption] - well, let me finish. And he said, well, we we need this for organizational purposes. It's not -- I don't expect to get rich on it. And after it was all over with and all said and done, the case was coming up for trial. They tried it. So, he got 01:07:00nervous. Ragland got nervous. He turned all of his wealth to his wife. She should have served him right. She should have divorced the son of a bitch. And we made a settlement at the last hour, the day before the trial. He gave the lawyers' cost and an apology, public apology in writing. And I sent the fifty dollars back to the regional office. And I understand the regional director was grumpy; he was getting old. He said, "Well, what have you got to send the money back." It made the point. It made the point. And, uh, we were never called Communists again in Andrews. Then, I don't know what happened. As I told you, 01:08:00I spent four years away from the region doing other things. And in that period of time, we lost that local. Uh, it was a shock to me. Eventually, Amalgamated went in and organized them, and now it's an Amalgamated local, good people, a good union.

LUTZ: And now Amalgamated is the same as you?

BONANNO: Yeah, well UNITE, right.

LUTZ: [Inaudible]

BONANNO: Right, right, but it's still, you know, we merged but we are not merged to that extent.

LUTZ: All right. I've got to ask you about that, to get that clear in my head, too. Do you have to take a call?

BONANNO: Uh, my sister wants to talk to me. [Off record.] [Interview resumes.]

LUTZ: We left off at Andrews. You had just talked about how the Andrews union, after you had gone, had stopped and then went over to active.

BONANNO: Yeah. Uh.

LUTZ: So we are in 1952, '53, right around there?

BONANNO: Or 1954, something like that.

LUTZ: Well, what else were you up to?

BONANNO: Interestingly enough, uh, we then had a strike in Andrews, and to show the kind of involvement of Dubinsky, although he was handling world affairs and, you know, putting the AFL and CIO together and stuff like that, he would also take a hand in things like a strike. And, and that's how I got to, uh, to work with him. The Andrews strike was my, my strike, but he had -- to call the shots. And I said to him -- I called him up and I told him, 'I think we ought to make an unconditional offer to go back or something like that' -- the lawyers had advised that -- and that meant that the back pay would start ticking for our people, and it would be a burden on the Company and maybe a pressure to call 01:10:00them again, to you'know, strike. So he said, 'Bring the committee up to New York.' So I brought the Andrews committee up to New York. And we met in Dubinsky's office with the attorneys and went over the thing. And in a tearful session that lasted some two hours, it was decided that we should make this unconditional offer to go back as a strategic move. And after the meeting, Dubinsky called me back. He said, 'Bonanno, come here. Bananno. Bonanno, come here. ' He said, 'Let me tell you something.' He said, 'You see, you're still in control of the situation, and you've got to make your moves while you are still in control. Ahh, maybe two weeks, a month down the line, you wouldn't be in control.' So he says, 'Now is the time to make that move.' And I always 01:11:00admired him because he took his own good advice. When he retired, I think he retired just before he began to slip. He was in his early seventies, seventy-two or something like that. I think he knew he was beginning to slip and he took his own good advice. But he was quite a guy, in the middle fifties, 1956-57, I was an assistant director here. Well, it was '57…'57 -- I came back here in '56. By that time, I was married. I got married in January of '56, uh, and living in Atlanta, and I went – I had…One of my duties was to put together the retirement, or to help put together the retirement party, a 01:12:00celebration for the first retirees of our National Retirement Fund -- something like twelve people were retiring. This was 1957, Atlanta. I don't think people really recognized the problems that you had putting a thing like that together. You could not have an integrated function like that in a hotel. No hotel would take an integrated function. So I knew Stanford McIver. I dealt with him. He had a factory. That was Shur-Lee. [Recorder Off, then On]

LUTZ: Where we are is in the fifties. And you get to be Assistant Director down here.

BONANNO: Yeah, okay.

LUTZ: Now, let me ask you: Are you still involved in the American Labor Party at this point?

BONANNO: No, no. That was in New York. Then the American Labor Party got taken over by the, the extreme left, and it, it became the Liberal Party then. It was changed, so then the American Labor Party became a left-wing kind of deal in New York. And, so we came out of that -- the Liberal Party. No, it was just the New York State party. Here, down here, I was always in the Democratic Party.

LUTZ: Are you a Yellow Dog Democrat?

BONANNO: No -- Well, yes, I guess, because I had to hold my nose sometimes to vote, sometimes, you know, the choices were slim and none. And sometimes they still are, excepting like here in the fifth district with John Lewis. But, frankly, it's tough sometimes to vote for the people that you've got to vote 01:14:00for. Imagine voting for Herman Talmadge?

LUTZ: No, not in a million years. [Laughing]

BONANNO: I, I was instrumental in getting a rump -- By the way, the official movement, that's another part of the story. Before Herb Mabry, there was a guy by the name of Montague who was president of the State Federation of Labor, and they supported the Wool Hats from south Georgia. And I'd go into these meetings, and I almost had fisticuffs with one of them because I would say, 'How can you support a guy --?' 'Well, all the court houses are painted by union painters.' I said, 'Oh, what's that got to do with schools, roads, and people, and segregation' -- and what have you. And so we had, we had some times, even here, within the labor movement. I'm getting away from what I wanted to talk about.

LUTZ: Well, let's get back to what you want to talk about, and I'll get back to politics later.

BONANNO: Yeah. Uh.

LUTZ: You are assistant director --

BONANNO: Yeah. And we are setting this retirement party up here, 1957, twelve people. We couldn't decide new, sh-- Stanford McIver, who was one of the owners of Shurlee Coat and Suit -- and at that time, he was president of a Jewish Community Club down there. There were several of them. The one that survives is called The Standard Club. That's now up in the North Fulton area. And by that time, he was president, chairman, of the Progressive Club. The Progressive Club owned a facility that is now Turner's headquarters down near Georgia Tech. But that was the Progressive Club. And because I knew many of them and dealt 01:16:00with them, it was the only place you could go in and get a drink on a Sunday, and a meal. It also had slot machines. And that was the best of times because the meals were very cheap when they had the slots. There were slots in Atlanta. Oh, sure. The Eagles had slots right around the corner from the Ansley Hotel downtown. If you knew it, the bellhop would tell you, to go around the corner, and there were slot machines up against the whole wall. There were slot machines. But when the slots were chased out of Atlanta, the meals got to be more expensive at the Progressive Club. The public was not invited. It was a private club. But I knew people, and I could go by virtue of knowing some 01:17:00friends. But I convinced Stanford that we should have that function in his home, in his dining room. It could handle five or six hundred people.

LUTZ: How did you convince him?

BONANNO: He was a very liberal kind of guy. He wasn't a typical redneck kind of guy, not at all. He was a liberal guy, and he took it on himself to give the approval, so that we had what amounted to a completely integrated function. Now, Dubinsky came, and Dubinsky would not come unless it was completely integrated. And he came, and I went to Mayor Hartsfield a couple of times, with 01:18:00a committee, and asked him to come. Now, he was facing re-election. And I said, 'Look, I understand in six months or nine months you are going to be on the ballot. And I want you to know that this function is going to be completely integrated. We've invited a cross section of the community--religious leaders, political leaders, et cetera, et cetera, and our membership is open--open seating arrangements, cocktail party, open bar and so on. And his answer was, I think, one of the reasons why Atlanta is Atlanta today. He said, 'I'll be there with bells on.' He said, 'I will come.' He said, 'Some of these old cronies around here want me to close the golf courses. I said, What are we going to do? 01:19:00Grow corn on them? I said, They're there to play golf. The citizens of Atlanta love golf.' I said, 'Well, that's great, Mayor. We'll be glad to have you.' He said, 'Are you telling me Dubinsky is going to be down?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'When is he coming?' I said, 'Well, I think he is coming on Tuesday, you know, the day of the function, that afternoon.' He said, 'You contact so-and-so, and I'll have two motorcycle cops at the airport to escort you into town.' So, sure enough, the appointed hour came, he came in on Capital Airways—a bi-com, not a jet -- it was a prop, jet-like -- and the old Hartsfield -- Well, it wasn't Hartsfield Airport. It was a Quonset hut, and I 01:20:00met the, I met the patrolmen or the motorcycle guys, and they took me inside the gate, right up to the plane. I parked my car, and the Capital people--I had warned them that this guy was, our president, was coming. They took my ticket--They took his ticket for the bags, took it out of the cargo hold right there, put it in my car, and we, with two cops in front of us, were coming into town. Of course, there was no expressway like there is now. But there was kind of a road that looked better than most, but there were two on one side, two on the other. And they got these motorcycle guys, and traffic was kind of heavy, and they're pushing people away, and I'm following behind them. Dubinsky is sitting in the front seat smoking a big cigar. My wife was with me, and Leon 01:21:00Stein, the editor of Justice, had come with Dubinsky, and the first thing he wanted to know: 'Who is that girl? Who is that lady?' I said, 'That's my wife.' 'Oh, okay.' And then he says, 'Well, don't go so fast.' Following behind these cops--I said, 'Well, I've got to follow them. They're cleaning the road out for us.' 'Oh,' he said, 'a couple of years ago, those cops would have been behind us, not in front of us.' I said, 'Well, yeah, even today, if it weren't for Mayor Hartsfield, they might be behind us.' He came, and the function, I considered, was one of the most telling points in our experience down here because it changed everything, I think, even with the members and the 01:22:00staff and what-not. And Dubinsky had a thick Jewish accent -- I mean, pretty thick, but it got thicker when he got emotional in speeches. He was an emotional speaker, powerful voice, little guy -- 5'4", I think he was, or 5'5", but when he spoke, his accent, his emotions showed, and his accent got deeper and deeper. And afterwards, he cried at this session. He cried. Dubinsky could cry for the whole world. He could kill an individual but cry for the whole world. After it was over, my members came, and they said, 'Oh, what a wonderful man, Dubinsky. What a wonderful speaker!' They'd say, 'We don't know 01:23:00what he said, but, boy, the way he said it!' [Laughter.] But they were so impressed that this guy came down, and that's how we retired our first people. It was, the mayor – it was, I think it was a telling time. Things opened up. And I think Atlanta was salvaged from the Wallaces standing in the doorway and the lynchings and the mobs. As a matter of fact, I was on a committee called OASIS -- Organizations to Assist Schools in September.

LUTZ: Really, tell me about this.

BONANNO: It was a group of community people. I don't want to say 'leaders,' but teachers, business people, labor people. And I was on that committee. I 01:24:00represented the ILG. And I'd go to meetings and talk about plans and how to avoid the unpleasantness of other cities in other states like Little Rock and so on. And plans were laid; and plans were laid by a good many people getting the message across that it ain't going to work this way. It ain't going to work here in Atlanta like it did in Little Rock and places like that. And it went over very quietly here. But, interestingly enough, CBS television news picked up one of our meetings, and they photographed it. And they played it on national news on TV. And I was going down to Mississippi that week. And I 01:25:00said, 'Oh, God. My members are going to -- you know -- How are they going to take it?' And I was amazed because they said, 'Oh, Nick, we saw you on TV.' But that was the extent of it. They said they were kind of proud that they knew somebody on national TV. But the contents of it didn't ever take effect.

LUTZ: Right, you were Dean Martin [laughing].

BONANNO: Well, whatever, but the contents were not discussed. It was just, 'We saw you on TV.' You know. Ahhh, but those days were very interesting and very hairy. I.. I've skipped over some parts of my time in jail.

LUTZ: Oh, wait a minute, we've got to go back to that [laughter] Everyone wants to know the time you served.

BONANNO: It's one o'clock.

LUTZ: You know what…

LUTZ: September 22, 1995. Tell me about your stretch in the joint, how you were an organizer?

BONANNO: Well, there were several arrests. My arrest record is considerable, as a matter of fact. Organizing the Carolinas, I was sort of in charge of organizing for the ILG from 1953 -- '52, late '52, '53, '54, '55. And we did some good organizing. When I first went to the Carolinas, we had two locals with several hundred members, and when I left, we had about two thousand members, with about six locals, and growing. But it took a great deal of strike activity. And when you have a strike activity, there is always an 01:27:00arrest. I think I told you about the mayor's police chief in Walterboro, South Carolina, who would come and walk me over almost every week or ride me every week to the mayor's office and tell me to get out of town. But, um, in some towns it got even rougher than that. In Greensboro, North Carolina, we had a strike that lasted a year and a half. We didn't organize the place. It was in conjunction with a strike in New York and New Jersey with a children's wear firm in Appomattox, Virginia. And I was arrested there for assaulting a female. Fortunately, the police captain, who was on the scene, testified in my behalf

LUTZ: [laughter][inaudible]

BONANNO: Or I would have been sent away for a couple of years. The girl 01:28:00accosted me. It was a cold February morning -- and accosted me on the picket line. I was walking the picket line -- and grabbed my coat, and I didn't know whether she had a scissors in her hand or what-have-you, and I just pulled her by the coatsleeve. I didn't touch her, really, her sleeve, to get her away from me. And the captain came over and said, 'Go on into work. You have no right touching this man. He can't touch you. You can't touch him.' Anyway, I found what she was sticking in my coat was a Valentine card. It was just about Valentine's Day. It said, "I won't strike for love." This was just supposed to be a big joke. And I showed the Captain the card, then threw it away. About a week later, he called me at the hotel. And he said, 'Nick, will you come around the corner.' It was the old O'Henry Hotel in Greensboro, and the police station 01:29:00was right behind it. He said, 'They are going to arrest you.' He said, 'I don't want to embarrass you by sending a couple of detectives to your hotel.' I said, 'You are kidding me. Is there a police dance or ball or something and you want tickets?' And he said, 'No, no, no, I'm serious. Come on around the corner.' And I did. They printed me, and mugged me. And I said, 'Well, what's the charge?' He said, 'Oh, uh molesting a -- assaulting a female.' Which is a felony, but, fortunately, he testified for me. I got legal representation, a local attorney there. And his presentation was an honest one, and I was lucky. And I was found not guilty. But, later on, they stirred something else up, and 01:30:00I was found guilty of, ah, disorderly conduct in Greensboro. In Spartanburg, South Carolina, I had a strike that lasted about six -- three or four months, almost six months. They -- I had just been married, maybe five or six months. This was 1956, and we had a headquarters across from the plant that we were striking. And I came back to Atlanta with my wife to get an apartment because we were like gypsies for that six months. We were going back – And, uh, we were going back in…we came back into Spartanburg, and I was walking up to the 01:31:00headquarters, and a police captain came in right -- with a couple of detectives -- right in behind me. And I knew the guy. We had talked many a time. And he said, 'Up with your hands.' And he pushed me. So my wife looked at me, and I said…she said, 'He's kidding.' And I said, 'No, he's not kidding.' And I said, 'What's the charge?' He says, 'Peeping Tom.' Well, I never went to trial on it, but it hit the newspaper, and not only was I arrested, but there was another fellow, another union officer, and a picket, a woman. The theory was that we, supposedly -- Immediately, you get the picture of looking into someone's bedroom or bathroom or something. No, that wasn't the charge. It was peering at a loading dock to get names and addresses of customers that they were 01:32:00showing -- Which you know was nonsense, but it got the headline: 'Union Officers Arrested For Peeping Tom" -- I mean, and right away, you get -- But it never came to trial, never. They kept postponing the probable cause hearing, postponing it and postponing it. Then, it died a natural death. But they still made an arrest for Peeping Tom. So whenever I would meet with their local, which is no longer there, unfortunately -- it was a very large local, I would remind them of the Peeping Tom charges, and, but everybody knew what it was all about. But in Asheville, North Carolina, there was a strike situation, I wasn't so lucky. I was arrested for violating the terms of an injunction, supposedly. 01:33:00And we were enjoined to so many people at the gate -- four people or something -- at the door or picketing. And I was in charge of the strike, so I would have to go down and talk to the head deputy of Buncombe County, and he would -- We would exchange ideas, if something was wrong, straighten it out. And, technically speaking, I guess, I was one extra picket or striker. So for that reason, the judge gave me thirty days. He also gave another organizer thirty days, and he gave one of the strikers 30 days. But it was a striker who had become a pimp for the Company, but he thought that that pimp was me, so he was 01:34:00giving me two thirty day sentences. The judge was really confused. But it was a fixup job. It was a made up, company job and I did serve nineteen of those days in the Buncombe County jail. It probably was a very informative, interesting time because they put me in what was maximum security for several days. I was in with the cream….creme de la creme, rather, of criminal society --

LUTZ: Of Buncombe County [laughing] --

BONANNO: Rape -- child molester, bank robbers, attempted murderers. And it was a very interesting six days, seven days, ahhh, because I got a chance to look at another side of life which I don't want to ever look at again. But I found that 01:35:00I could get along with them. When they were in there, they were a different kind of people. Um, my best buddy was a bank robber from Seneca, South Carolina. They would lock us up after a certain hour, six o'clock, or after dinner or whenever they gave us the slop they gave us. And because he could buy his way out, his cell was left open so he could go up and down the cellblock. And he would get the hot water for us. We, I'd never eat -- I would never eat a Three Musketeer candy again -- I don't know if you know what they are. They are like Milky Ways -- because he would go down and get the hot water, and we would have those candies and break it and make hot chocolate, but he was the guy who would 01:36:00do it. Or if you got sick, he was the guy who could call the turnkey to get help or something. Outside, they were very seamy, which I don't want to get into. But I got along with him because he said privately -- we had conversations -- He was a bank robber. He was a habitual bank robber. His father was a very rich construction man. His brother was a preacher. And I would tell him, 'You need psychological help.' He would sit on the other side of the bars from me, and we'd talk. He'd say, 'I know all about you. I've been reading about you in the newspaper. And you're the only innocent guy in this darn jail.'

LUTZ: [Laughing.]

BONANNO: And he had an ulterior motive, too. He told me how he was caught, why he was caught. He spent some years in Columbia, South Carolina. He was a very 01:37:00interesting guy. Of course, I lost track of him once I got out. But, after that, they put me in with the hobos and the drunks, who were very decent guys when they were sober. They taught me how to play double-handed pinochle, double-deck pinochle. They had one guy that charged up the hill with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan. It was very interesting. I used to read letters that some of them couldn't read, and they would get love letters from the lady part of the – and I learned….the ladies' jail. And I learned all about Green Lizard. Green Lizard was a hair dressing, or something -- sold at Kressky's 01:38:00in those days and it was, I don't know, thirty or forty percent alcohol. And when I first heard these fellows, they'd say, 'Soon as I get out of here, I'm going to go for Green Lizard.' And I'd say, 'What the hell is Green Lizard?' And they'd say, well, it was the alcohol content. They'd get drunk on this hair dressing or whatever. They were very interesting days in that jail, and I got a chance to read. But I got out in nineteen days for good behavior. Or something like that.

LUTZ: You busted out of the Big House? [laughter]

BONANNO: Yeah, I busted out.

LUTZ: Wow

BONANNO: It really -- you know -- I don't know how these fellows do life; I'll be honest with you. But it was part of the company and the community and the legal setup to beat the union. And when I did get out, it was amazing, I stayed 01:39:00with this guy -- I stayed one night in a hotel there, in Ashville, and while…and while I was in, the contract was negotiated. The next day after getting out, I went to the plant, and walked through the plant. I think the employer thought I was going to punch him in the nose. I felt like it, but I didn't because we had to negotiate a contract. And Dubinsky called me to go up to New York. I was not married. I was just about to be married. This was October of '55. I remember it quite well, and I got married in January of '56, so that the night before I went to jail, I called my wife -- or my fiancé, she 01:40:00wasn't my wife yet -- and I was supposed to go to New York to prepare for the wedding and the reception and so on. We got married in New York, and I told her I wasn't coming, that I couldn't make the date, and we'd have to postpone it. And she said, 'Why, are you getting cold feet?' And I said, 'No, I'm going to jail.' And I don't think she really believed me. But, uh.

LUTZ: [Laughter] It's the best excuse I've ever heard.

BONANNO: The last night or night before going in, they were looking for me, and they were by my hotel, and we got the word. My attorney got the word. I had to change attorneys, because there was an attorney by the name of George Pennall, I'll never forget, and he sold me down the river -- because he said, 'Just get out of the county, and they can't come and get you' and -- you know -- 'as long as you don't come into the county, it, uh it, it won't stick.' I said, 'I 01:41:00can't do that.' So we paid a $5,000 fine, which was a lot of money in those days, and I got thirty days, supposedly for a violation of the court order, the injunction. Dubinsky called me, and he said, 'Come up to see me.' And I did. And we had a conversation, and I told about my experiences. And he asked me, 'Why didn't you leave?' I said, 'Well, if I had left, the union would have went down the drain, and we were negotiating a contract.' So when I came out, his secretary, Hannah Haskell said, 'What did you get? What'd you…' I said, 'Nothing. He said, Why did you -- We chatted about my experience. He was interested in it.' And the payoff came at the convention in 1956. He made a 01:42:00big fuss about it from the podium, and he made it sound as though the police took me from the church and put me in jail, that I was about to get married. He made a big fuss. That was his payoff at the convention.

LUTZ: That's nice.

BONANNO: Hmm?

LUTZ: That's nice, even if it does kind of create the vision of you being torn from the altar; it was a nice thing to do.

BONANNO: Yeah, it was, it was interesting. But it was also dangerous. We had many, many close calls in those years. As I said before, the SLED people in South Carolina, Jimmy Byrne's hatchet men. And North Carolina wasn't too much better. It was difficult at times. Then, in 1950-- December of '55, I came to 01:43:00Atlanta to become Assistant Regional Director and got married in January of '56.

LUTZ: Did you miss the organizing?

BONANNO: [No audible response.]

LUTZ: Did you miss organizing?

BONANNO: Oh, I never stopped doing it. I've been an organizer all the time, even now. I go to meetings, organizing meetings, and make pictures, speeches, and stuff like that.

LUTZ: You know, I've been talking to a lot of people whose marriages fell apart under the strain. What held yours together?

BONANNO: Well, that's a big -- Maybe I'll ask my wife. That's a good question. Maybe it's better -- Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well, the children held us together. I may not have told you, but we had four children, three boys 01:44:00and a girl. My first three children are chosen children. They -- We took them into our lives as infants. Then, after sixteen years of marriage, my wife got pregnant, and so we had another little boy, who is now twenty-three. My oldest is thirty-four. The kids helped us stay together, I guess, in the absence of a husband, at least she had children. But I think it affects different people in different ways. We were able to make it though.

LUTZ: Do you think that an organizer has particular qualities?

BONANNO: He's got to like people, and he's got to be likable. He's got to be able to get across. I was in Mississippi in 1951, and I think when we started 01:45:00this conversation I hardly understood what they said, but I think I got across the idea that I liked them as human beings, as workers, and I was there to help them or to try to help them anyway. If you can get that across to people, I think it works. You can't be a pompous ass, or an egotist--or at least, I don't think so. You've got to be pretty human and get across your humanity to people, and get the idea across that you really like them, which you can't fake that. You really can't fake that. If you don't like people, this is not the game to be in.

LUTZ: Did you have anybody not liking you because you were a Yankee or Italian?

BONANNO: If they start that way, but once you got through that, past that, I know some people said, 'Change your name,' and, you know, this, that, and the other. I had three strikes against me. I'm Roman Catholic, and Italian, and still have the 'Yankee' accent after all these years. But I think I overcame all of those obstacles, if you want to call them that. I think if you're basically decent towards people, they are going to react in kind. It doesn't make any difference what you are or -- I don't think so -- unless you wear those differences on your sleeve. You know, if I went around saying, 'Hey, I'm an 01:47:00Italian, Roman Catholic Yankee and I'm better than you.' Well, you might get a reaction to that. But if you say, look, that's who I am, accept me as I am, I'm a decent guy -- I had this kind of reaction, 'Oh, yes, I know, ah, my, uh, my cousin's uncle married a Catholic.' Well, okay, but, look, I don't have an eye in the middle of my head. If you want to feel my tailbone, it doesn't stick out. Oh, well, anyway.

LUTZ: When you got to Atlanta, then, why don't you tell the audience what you did?

BONANNO: Well, I became Assistant -- I was asked to come in as Assistant Director, which I had refused at one time because I was doing so well, I thought, in the Carolinas. But I came in, and I was Assistant Director here for about ten years.

LUTZ: Okay.

BONANNO: With a guy by the name of Al Kehrer.

LUTZ: Yeah.

BONANNO: Towards the end, Kehrer and I had disagreements -- We had a disagreement, but we survived each other. Then, he resigned in about '66, '65 or '66, and went to work for the AFL-CIO. And I don't necessarily want to get into that period. They brought in a new director from Pennsylvania. And I worked for him--with him -- for about a year and a half. Then, I was suspended because we couldn't get along. He was fiscally irresponsible, I thought, in my estimate.

LUTZ: What a tactful way to put it.

BONANNO: Waste. I'm not talking about thievery. I'm talking about waste and judgments. He was totally, in my estimation, totally unprepared for the job. As a manager for a local in Pennsylvania, to give him a job like this region was, I thought he was totally unprepared. I tried to help him, but then political -- the president would have changed. Dubinsky--now it was Stolberg. There were elements, political changes going on in New York. He was on one side, and I guess I was on the other. I didn't know it. And he suspended me. 01:50:00This was a blow. I thought it was maybe the end of my career in the ILG. And I called the president, then-President Stolberg, and he said, 'Come on up and see me, Nick. I want to talk to you.' He said, 'I didn't think he would do that. There must have been conversations in New York.' And I said, 'I really don't understand it. There's no charges. There's no -- You know, I've been around for a number of years as Assistant Director.' He said, 'Well, if you can't -- If he can't use you, you work for me.' He said, 'I'm setting up a new organizing department called COD, Central Organizing Department, and I want you as the Associate Director. You can be the out of town guy. There's a New York guy -- Douglas Levin -- and I want you to work together. And your office will be in New York.' I said, 'Hey, wait a minute, I've got a house and three kids' -- at that point --'and a wife down in Atlanta.' He said, 'Well, you commute. 01:51:00You are going to be traveling the whole country just about a year or so.' Well, again, I did it for four years almost.

LUTZ: These directors don't have much of a sense of time, do they? [Laughing.]

BONANNO: No. No. No. So then when he called me in to Atlantic City -- Actually, I commuted to New York about three and a half years, going up, you know, on Monday early and coming home on Friday, but sometimes not coming home on Friday. When I came home, I gave up golf and tourn... I just had to be a father for forty-eight hours.

LUTZ: They probably got more attention that way.

BONANNO: My wife has to have -- You've got to ask her. She deserves all the credit in the world for being able to raise those kids practically as a single parent, excepting for a weekend visit. As a matter of fact, my daughter -- who 01:52:00I am very close with now -- That's the young lady that's the public defender in DeKalb County -- She was like a year and a half, two years old, and I was the enemy because when I came home, she'd be bumped out of the bed and back to her crib. And by the time we got to be friendly, I was leaving again. Later on, she told me it took her a long time to accept me as part of the family when I came back. But we survived as a unit, and about six months before coming back to Atlanta, he called me up and said, 'Come see me in Atlantic City. They were --'

LUTZ: Stolberg did?

BONANNO: Yeah, this was '69 now. And he said, 'Well, how are you doing in Baltimore?' Because he had sent me to Baltimore. The vice president was sick, Angela Bombase, and I had become the Associate Director for what we called the Upper South Department. I was no longer in COD; I did that for three and a half years. I reported right to the president. There were no in-between guys. I'd worked directly with him for three and a half years. And, then, he called me in and said, 'Angela needs help. Go to Baltimore, and work down there.' And I said, 'Fine.' The next Monday, I went down there. And I did that for six months. Then he called me in to Atlantic City to meet with him. He said, 'How are you doing in Baltimore?' I said, 'I love it. I mean. I get along with her great. She's a great gal.' She was in her seventies. She had colon problems; 01:54:00and about four or five weeks after I got there, she had a serious operation, a colostomy and all that. And she came out, and it was a love affair, you know -- I don't mean a 'love affair,' talkin' about, but the relationship was good. I took my family up there, got a house. He said, 'You're happy?' I said, 'Yeah, but I've got to move my family.' I said, 'That's enough.' He said, 'How long has the whole thing been -- It's been what?' I said, 'Almost four years.' 'What? It seems like a year.' I said, 'To you?' He says, 'To me. Ask my wife, you know?' And then the conversation rolled around, and he wanted to know if I'd go to California and become the director out there. I said, 'Well, I -- If you want me to do that, but I've got to move my family. I'll go out to the 01:55:00West Coast, if you want me to, I'll move my family.' So, then, he said, 'What about Atlanta?' I said, 'Is it open?' He said, 'No.' I said, 'Then I don't want to talk about it.' And if you're asking me which one, and that's not open, and Baltimore is more experience closer to the one I've had all these years in a Southern type of experience, but I'll go anywhere, but it's got to be with my family.' You know, then, we're musing, 'What if Atlanta opens up?' I said, 'Well, if Atlanta opens up, and you want to play that kind of game, sure, I'll do it my way, because I've had the experience, and I know where the roads 01:56:00are and the people are.' And he said, 'Well, I think I've got my answer. I'll see you in October.' This was September. In October, there was a big reception in Washington, and he had, at that AFL-CIO convention, he had been elected to the Executive Board, had taken Dubinsky's place, and so there was a reception and a meeting; we had a staff meeting. And he just waggled his finger across a crowded room like in South Pacific, and I went over, and I said, 'Lou, Congratulations' -- or President -- I called him 'Lou' privately -- but I said, 'Congratulations on your election.' And he said, 'Nick, I've been meaning to talk to you. What's today, Thursday? Next Tuesday, I want you to go to Atlanta and take that office over.' I said, 'Oh?' I had been hearing that the director 01:57:00had resigned under pressure. He was told that he couldn't do the job because he had probleAnd, that, uh, he was offered another job away from the region, back in Pennsylvania, under supervision. He would, he would start a million things and never finish them, and he refused. He's still around. I don't want to mention names. People know, but it makes no difference for me -- One of the things that Stolberg had said to me was, 'Could you work with this guy?' I said, 'No, he couldn't live with me. How could I live with him? It wouldn't be any different.' He said, 'What about his assistant?' I said, 'No, his assistant is too smart for me. He is too smart for him. He's taking him for a 01:58:00ride.' I knew. I kept up. You know I had friends in the region, and they would complain talking about him. I didn't want to hear about, but I knew about it. And, uh, he said, 'Okay, I've got my answer.' And, of course, this Friday, boom, he called me and said, 'Go take this office over.' Well, I'll be honest with you. The first three months back were horrendous. Every drawer that I opened another problem dropped out. Contracts -- they had a killer newspaper's edition, which I read, which was a horrendous thing. It was really bad. But it was worthwhile. People would say, 'Gee, Nick, I understand it was a terrible -- 01:59:00What a terrible thing to have to go in like that.' I said, 'Hell, no. That's easy. Because if he were doing a good job, it would be difficult for me to do better.

LUTZ: [laughter][inaudible]

BONANNO: He was doing such a terrible job that it was easy to do better.' And there's a certain amount of truth to that. If you send me into a lousy situation so at least I could look good maybe. If I looked bad, then you'd say, 'Well, the other guy couldn't do it. I can't do it.' Then, we got to grow. That was October of '69, and, of course, I've been director ever since. Ah, We, uh, made -- It was a great time.

LUTZ: A very dramatic time.

BONANNO: Yeah, it was, it was very comfortable for the union. I mean, we grew, and the members got good contracts. Industry was moving down here. Good 02:00:00companies. Jonathan Logan, Bobbie Brooks, Country Miss, many mills we had associated with -- Logan had a mill in Spartanburg. Leslie Fay had a mill in Lincolnton. Membership kept growing. It was growing so fast that we had trouble servicing correctly, but we did it. We took people out of the shops. I found that my best staff people came out of the shops.

LUTZ: Why?

BONANNO: Because they understood the business. Especially, chairladies [?]. Marian Progmire, she's a vice president also in the southeast here, then Tennessee State director. She was a chairlady, a young girl when I first met her over in Jackson, Tennessee. Almost all of my staff, the better part of them 02:01:00are out of the shops. That's not saying you can't do it unless you come out of the shop.

LUTZ: But it helps?

BONANNO: Yeah, it helps. Shop experience helps. You know what it means to have to fight over a piece rate or not get it or get it, how to handle a grievance. You don't have to sign up for school. They've done it.

LUTZ: What people pick up is important?

BONANNO: Yeah, I think so. And, so that's how I've staffed most of my staff; ninety or like eighty percent of my staff come out of the shops.

LUTZ: While you were doing this, were you getting involved in politics, too?

BONANNO: Oh, yeah, sure.

LUTZ: Why don't you tell me about that?

BONANNO: Actually, before I came back, as the director, as assistant director, I 02:02:00got involved with the Carl Sanders campaign here. He ran against the Wool Hat from south Georgia. I can't think of his name.

LUTZ: Talmadge?

BONANNO: No. But, actually, the official labor movement here backed the segregationist, and I joined the group of Steelworkers, ILG, and a few others, who backed a guy by the name of Carl Sanders, young, who didn't talk about race. He talked about schools and roads and doing a better job for the state of Georgia. And he won. And I'll never forget because they were cautious. 02:03:00Sanders was cautious. His guy, an attorney -- There was an attorney by the name of Richardson who handled his stuff. He said, you know, you couldn't get a hotel to have a mixed meeting. I said well the only kind of meetings we have at our locals are open. There's no segregation. We never had a segregated local in the South, the ILGW, never. I said, 'Well, would you come to the Union hall? It was at 187 1/2 Trinity.' He said, 'Yeah, we'll do that.' I said, 'It's not segregated. Our union hall is open to all of our members.' And he came--Sanders came. And I remember having the podium, which was there, and a 02:04:00Union label banner. And somebody took that picture. They took a picture. And after his election, it appeared in a Chamber of Commerce publication. And it was proof positive that Carl Sanders was dictated to by the unions, which was nonsense.

LUTZ: Don't you wish?

BONANNO: Yeah, right, but they really gave him a hard time over that picture. I don't where the heck that picture is today. It should be in the archives. But, yeah, we stayed active and -- fought with people like Lester Maddox and so on, and people like 'Minimum Jim Smith.' He was a Congressman here years ago. And his belief about minimum wage -- We called him "Minimum Jim" -- was that there 02:05:00should be no minimum wage. A man should be able to work and get what he deserves, whether it's ten cents an hour or a hundred dollars an hour. So, I remember one time, we did a number on him. He used be at the -- what was called the Ansley Hotel. There was a Dinkler Plaza or Ansley Hotel. It was one of the fancy -- considered a fancy downtown hotel. And he was speaking at an eggs and breakfast -- eggs and issues meeting at the Chamber, or something. And we picketed him. And we got a big, hulking organizer and put an ape costume on him, and said that he was a throwback of Minimum Jim. Oh, it made the newspaper, and we hit him with the name 'Minimum Jim,' and it kind of stuck. It 02:06:00got to be a popular name for awhile. But we had rough times, and we supported people like Wyche Fowler.

LUTZ: Was he one of the good guys?

BONANNO: Oh, yeah, Wyche was a good Congressman, and, not so….considering everything, a good senator, better than Talmadge or Russell on labor issues. Wyche would come to our regional conferences. As a matter fact, I think I was the first one -- I made a mistake, a purposeful mistake, and I introduced him as 'Senator Wyche Fowler,' thinking ahead a little bit, and he became a Senator. But he forgot where he came from. He ran a lousy campaign, but he was a good Congressman. He was a hundred percent, ninety-five or a hundred percent. Then, 02:07:00of course, Andy Young. We worked with Andy. And what I consider the best one of all is John Lewis, right now. He's, he is really a friend, and he knows that he had only one true friend in this area, in the fifth congressional district, and that was the labor movement -- Julian Bond, Andrew Young, all of them, knifed him. They went to Washington, and they told our people: 'Don't waste your money on John Lewis.' And John knows that. He still remembers it. He doesn't forget from whence we came. And the other boys -- They were trying to elect Julian Bond -- which, you know, he might have made a good Congressman, but I don't think he'd made half as good a Congressman as John Lewis.

LUTZ: Yeah, won a lot of money on that election.

BONANNO: Did you. And the other Congressperson that I think would be a crime to lose is Cynthia McKinney. She has what they call 'batsa' for a young lady.

LUTZ: Batsa -- All right, never mind. I know what it means.

BONANNO: She has intestinal fortitude.

LUTZ: There you go.

BONANNO: I took an employer up there to talk with her about the health care bill, when there was a health care bill a couple of years ago. But I also told this employer that this young lady, this young Congressperson, had voted against 02:09:00NAFTA. She told us a story about how Clinton, the President, had powered little tete a tetes with small groups of Democratic Congressmen and Congresswomen, and she was in one of those groups. And, of course, she had declared against NAFTA, which I think was a smart thing to do. I think Clinton was not wise in picking up Bush's dirty linen and passing it and calling it NAFTA. But after the breakfast or lunch or whatever it was, he called her in privately to the Oval Office and gave her twenty minutes of arm twisting. And, at the end of it, said "of course, now, Cynthia"-- and promises of whatever -- He said, 'Now, of course, Cynthia, now, you are going to give me your vote.' And she said, 02:10:00prettily and sweetly, 'No, President.' She said, well, his face was just stony. [inaudible] But as she and her aide left, the administrative assistant that was with her, she understands there was quite loud hollering coming out of the room. And she was telling this employer the story, and he was quite impressed. Subsequently, at an Amalgamated meeting, she came -- I just happened to be there. I was sitting on the dais, and she sat next to me. She said, 'What shall I say?' I said, 'Tell them the story about the President. They'll enjoy that.' She's quite a gal.

LUTZ: She's a pistol.

BONANNO: She's okay, I think. Unfortunately, they are playing politics with her district.

LUTZ: You might lose Newt on that, too, though. So you've got to look at the bright side.

BONANNO: Yeah, right. Well, I don't know. Newt could have been had -- the powers that be -- when he was running in the Eastern Airline district. There were strikes down that way. But, now, he's in Dunwoody, so he's in good shape.

LUTZ: Yeah, it's too bad. How are you fixed for time?

LUTZ: Around this time, the Civil Rights Movement -- Actually, the Civil Rights Movement was changing by '69 -- but there was still some chugging along on it. Generally, how would you say the ILG and the Civil Rights Movement got along?

BONANNO: I think I told you all along, even as the Assistant Director, prior to '69, I participated in groups and activities to foster integration and to 02:12:00eliminate segregation. And we did it outside the shop and inside the shop. In some of the areas where we operated, there were segregated shops. And if pressers in the shop were black, they were all black --

BONANNO: [inaudible]...and little by little, we got South Carolina, Georgia. And we worked, as I say, inside and outside the shop. I participated in a group called OASIS, I think I mentioned, aaah, here in Atlanta. And we worked with, 02:13:00uh, with Martin Luther King, and we worked with all kinds of people, groups. And, like I said, we never had, we never had a segregated local. And all of our meetings were open. Um. It, it created problems for us, but it solved more than it created.

LUTZ: What do you mean by that?

BONANNO: Eh, the workers looked at each other as workers rather than as white or black, uuum, and they reached out to each other. Now, what they did socially after work or after the union meeting was beyond our purview, but at least it 02:14:00was a beginning. When we had a strike headquarters in Walterboro or Spartanburg that was completely open to whites, blacks, Indians, whatever, because in North Carolina, we had Indian members. There was never offices, elections -- I had locals in Florida, for instance, Sanford, Florida. One of my best staff members became a gal by the name of Dorothy Brown. She happened to be Afro-American, what is now called Afro-American, uh, but she was the president and chairlady of a white local. Uh, eventually, I put her on staff. She's just retired, um, but I put her on staff because she could work with anybody. We had, so we had, I had 02:15:00black business agents or Afro-American taking care of shops that had, mmh, white, majority white employees, so we, you know, and vice versa, that's as far as civil rights was concerned, uhh, the ILG was always two steps ahead of everyo…everybody else. And I think I said before that one of the reasons I think Atlanta is what it is today because they had a mayor called Hartsfield, who was two steps ahead of the rest of the South on that issue and on many others.

LUTZ: You've seen a bunch of mayors – ah, Hartsfield, Young, Jackson -- Who else has been mayor? Massell, I guess, was mayor for a while. [laughter]

BONANNO: Ivan Allen.

LUTZ: Oh, Ivan Allen, how did --

BONANNO: And Sam Massell --

LUTZ: Let me ask you --

BONANNO: Hartsfield was top of the list, top of the list, yeah. Ahh, Ivan Allen 02:16:00was a businessman's man. Andy Young was good. Maynard…was okay. He was good. Um, I don't know; Campbell remains to be seen, but he's a good man. Um, Massell got crossed up because of a garbage strike. Um, he took the wrong – Massell was, was a nice fellow, but he's five foot five, or something like that, and there was a garbage strike. The city employees struck, aah I think, for a week or something like that; and he got on television, and he liked the way he looked. He looked like he was six foot four. And, um, [laughter] he made a lot of mistakes. I'm not saying -- He didn't make all of the mistakes. He may have 02:17:00been goaded into some, but then he made the mistake of thinking he was a hero in beating back a strike. So I think he probably could have been…probably could have been a good man, because I happened to be on a committee that went to see him. I had just come back to Atlanta, and when I, when I was briefed on it by the people, I said, 'Gee whiz, I think you guys -- You know, a fresh look. I've just come to town. But what I hear from this guy, maybe he could be s…saved, you know?' But I think it was too late, aaaah, or at least there was 02:18:00conflicting – I…this is…I was not in the room when these deals -- But my understanding was that certain promises had been made to Massell by the union that was involved, and then the promises weren't kept. And so that started the ball rolling down. And then Massell saw himself on television, and he looked like a big guy, and I think he liked that image. I think he's a decent -- but he could have been a much better mayor if it wasn't for that incident. Then, of course, he lost the election. Andy Young was, of course, a good mayor. He projected that international flavor. I knew Maynard very well because he was a labor board examiner -- a field man, and had handled some of our cases. And 02:19:00about the time I came back in '69, he went into partnership, uh, or took into his firm -- He wasn't mayor then, but he took a young attorney that was working for the ILG into his firm, so, ah, you know, he knows about the ILG.

LUTZ: Yeah

BONANNO: He was a good man, I think, basically.

LUTZ: He got in trouble with the garbage workers, too.

BONANNO: Yeah, he had proble But I think he had a little more finesse than Sam did. Of course, Ivan Allen was a businessman's mayor -- put the ball team in, Ted Turner and so on. I think Atlanta has been lucky. It hasn't had, you know, really bad mayors. It's had some mediocre ones, but I still think that 02:20:00Hartsfield made it what it is today. He was, he was ahead of his time.

LUTZ: I've heard a couple of people say that Hartsfield was --

BONANNO: Yeah, yeah --

LUTZ: --Good for labor and good for business, too.

BONANNO: No, he was ahead of his time. He was ahead of his time. He saw the future in the airport. Um, he saw no future in segregation. He read the times correctly. And if you looked at him, you, you wouldn't think that he'd be that kind of guy. He looked like a, you know, somebody that might be prejudiced, that might be backward; but he wasn't. He was decent. He was married to a youngish gal, second wife or something like that. His first wife passed away. So that might have kept him thinking young.

LUTZ: [laughter] Yeah, well, it might have kept him cheery anyhow. Bright look on the world. Um, tell me about UNITE. I know it's jumping ahead, but tell me what happened with UNITE.

BONANNO: Well, both of our unions have a storied tradition. Both of our unions kind of roll on parallel tracks. One in the men's field, ours in the ladies' field. Um, politically, we've always been pretty close. Um, and their membership has been eroded, as has ours. Theirs a little bit less because in the textile industry it hasn't been affected as much…yet. Um, and in the menswear, coats and suits, not yet, but it's getting there. Uhhh, we've been screaming for twenty-five years about imports -- thirty years, maybe thirty-five 02:22:00years. Um, and, of course, our membership has been eroded. We, the ILG side was more adept at husbanding its resources, our money. Ah, Dubinsky was a fantastic guy with a buck. Aaah, we worked for him for nothing, you know, and he did, too, I mean, you know. And, and, and the other thing is, you've got to figure, we were scaled from the wages that our people made in the shops. We didn't have

LUTZ: Mmmhmm, not much.

BONANNO: Right, even the union people. So when I left the shop, I was making $175; when I came to work for Dubinsky, I made $60, and, you know, I had to be a thousand miles from home. So you went to work for Dubinsky and the ILG not to make money. You went because you believed in something. Aaah, you had a desire to do something for the garment workers. Um, I, I don't think the Amalgamated had that kind of leadership. They, they always had a kind of a dual leadership, even, um, in their best days before the textile merger. There was always a, um, 02:24:00kind of a dualism to their leadership, even like Sheinkman and, um, -- he was the Secretary-Treasurer, but he was almost, um, -- He just passed away -- Finley -- Murray Finley was the president. Schenkman was the Secretary-Treasurer. But they almost had equal positions in, in power.

LUTZ: Did they work in clothing/textile or right/left --

BONANNO: No, no, well, no -- Oh, I don't know, it might have been right and left a little bit with Jack on the left side of the thing and Finley on the right side. But they were both really out of the clothing end of the thing; Finley from Chicago, Sheinkman from New York. He was really an attorney. Um, but there was a dualism, and they had managers of districts sitting, uh, in the same 02:25:00office. When one picked up the phone, the other one did. Um, here in Atlanta, for instance, Bruce Raynor is an executive vice president, but he was a vice president in the area of textiles. But they also had a vice president in Knoxville for, for garments. Well, that guy quit and went to law school, became a lawyer, so they didn't, uh -- You know, they eliminated that. So it's taken a long time for that merger to come to -- Textile and Amalgamated. I hope it doesn't take as long for ours. But it'll take some time. It's, it's fresh. It's only since July.

LUTZ: Just where did you come up with a name, Jeez? [laughter]

BONANNO: That you've got to ask somebody else.

LUTZ: All right. [laughter]

BONANNO: I thought maybe it should be something like International Garment and Textile Workers Union of the World or something -- But somebody in some ivory tower.

LUTZ: Must have thought it was good PR or something. [laughter]

BONANNO: Absolutely. That's exactly what they said. And so United --well, UNITE became the name. But what's in a name.

LUTZ: [laughter]

BONANNO: A rose by any other name -- or whatever you are talking about. But it's fresh. It's too fresh for us to -- I think it came from necessity. Our resources and membership and their memberships. And

LUTZ: Are you still dividing up directorships?

BONANNO: Well, yeah, I'm still director of the ILG side, and Bruce is the Amalgamated side. What merged immediately was Cotton.

LUTZ: Okay.

BONANNO: Yeah. Ahh, um, Jay Mazur became president. He was the ILG. Arthur Loevy became Secretary-Treasurer. He is the Amalgamated guy. And, then, two executive vice-presidents, Bruce Raynor, who is also a director of the southeast area is executive vice-president from the Amalgamated side. And Edgar Romney is the executive vice-president from the ILG side. They get along fairly well. There are some differences. There are some strains and stresses, and then the newspapers merged; and the research departments merged; and the legal departments merged and the accounting and all the finances -- not all the finances. It couldn't be all the finances. But we threw a lot of money into this merger, millions and millions of dollars. But there are some finances that 02:28:00will never merge, that can't merge. I say they can't, but maybe they -- like a retirement fund. The ILG retirement fund has a hundred and thirty thousand people getting benefits. It's almost a billion dollars, 973 million. I'm on the committee -- as of the last report, and we are still underfunded, according to the actuaries. But those funds can't be merged, legally. We have a death benefit fund of two hundred million dollars that can only be applied to ILG members because it is a separate fund that sits by itself. We have a drug 02:29:00program that is funded separate and apart from any of our general funds. We have a staff retirement fund for the ILG. Of course, Amalgamated has some of these funds as well, on their side. They have a retirement fund in the textile industry. I went to a meeting just the other night -- of two hundred million dollars. So these funds cannot legally be brought together. They cannot -- They have different purposes. They are going to sit outside the pale of this merger. And, the other thing was agreed to in the merger is that there would be a six year opt-out if either side decided

LUTZ: Oh

BONANNO: That the marriage wasn't working, then the president of the AFL-CIO would be the arbitrator.

LUTZ: It seems like Egypt and Syria. UAR doesn't work -- oh, what the hay --

BONANNO: It's novel in its structure, but I happened to be on the committee, and it took a lot of meetings because even though we're a great deal alike, we have a great deal of differences, historically. Emotionally, it's difficult. I mean, for forty-five years, I've been saying ILGWU. Um, and, uh, it's tough to get that out of your lexicon, to get it out of your system.

LUTZ: Well, the thing is if you say UNITE, no one will know what you are talking about anyway when you say ILG. [laughter]

BONANNO: Yeah, right. No, but it'll work. It'll work. It's going to take some doing by all of us -- Them and us and we. Uhhh, and, uh, some people find it 02:31:00more difficult to swallow than others. I may be one of those. I mean, I get along really well with my counterpart, with Bruce. We, we have lunch periodically and talk about our problem.

LUTZ: How will it be after six years? You'll just say [laughter]

BONANNO: I won't be around six years from now.

LUTZ: When are you going to retire?

BONANNO: You want me to really tell you?

LUTZ: Sure. [laughter]

BONANNO: Probably in about a year.

LUTZ: Oh, c'mon, for real?

BONANNO: Yeah, yeah. I'll be sixty-nine. I'm sixty-eight now.

LUTZ: Yeah, but -- it's enough already?

BONANNO: Yeah, well, I won't just disappear into the woodwork. I want to stay active. I'll still travel, but maybe it's time to let the younger guys do it. 02:32:00You know, it used to be that they'd stay until they keeled over, but I don't want to be one of those. I want to be able to enjoy my retirement and stay active in politics and, and the labor movement. That's all I know. As a matter of fact, somebody said, 'What's your hobby?' Well, I used to play tennis until the accident. I can't play anymore. So, so, actually, my job is my hobby. It's my vocation and avocation, and it's.

LUTZ: Which actually brings me to the question of religion?

BONANNO: What's that?

LUTZ: Which brings me to religion, which we had talked a little about last time. Um, do you feel that -- Let me put it this way. Someone told me, of the people I've interviewed, that their ch…church became their union or their union became their church.

BONANNO: No, no.

LUTZ: Other people have said differently that, no, their religion was a sustaining thing.

BONANNO: Yeah.

LUTZ: How does religion fit into all this for you?

BONANNO: Well, it just so happens the Catholic Church, uh, issues, um, edicts about working men and labor organizations and. Th..they are very good on that issue. On some other issues, they might not be as good. Uh, but as far as working men being able to organize into groups to defend or to better themselves, I think Catholic Church is, is right on target as far as that is concerned. I, I hear them on race and civil rights, I go to church up in Sandy Springs, and they preach togetherness. Uh, brotherhood.

LUTZ: They've been a lot better than the Baptists on that --

BONANNO: Brotherhood and I ushered a mass, a 5:30 mass on Saturday, if you want to see me, you come to 5:30 mass. I'll get your money. We have black parishioners. They come in. And, you know, it's just no problem.

LUTZ: So it works out.

BONANNO: Now, when it comes to abortion issues, that's another matter. But as far as labor, no, my religion never interfered with my union work. And I never felt that doing my work ever made me less of a Catholic. I might disagree with the priest on certain things. But, basically, one had nothing to do with the other. As a matter of fact, I think as far as the Catholic position on labor unions, it's supportive. I can quote the Church -- If someone said, but in 02:35:00this part of the world -- very few Catholics said, 'My church won't let me join.' I did have that, for instance, in Walterboro. We had some born again, uh, preachers who wanted to be in the Walterboro strike. And I don't mind opening up my meetings with prayers or something, and, you know, if they want it, if it helps the -- if the membership wants that, oh, you know, we have chaplains and all. But, um, this preacher told his people that they were sinning if they were on strike. And they came to me. I was running that 02:36:00strike. And I said, 'Well, I don't believe it. Here's other religions, and it's no sin to defend yourself.' And, um, they went back. They decided, and they told their preacher to strike their names from the rolls, they weren't going to be, and he came running. And one day I gave him the opportunity to open a union meeting with prayer. And he told his boys to go ahead, that they could strike.

LUTZ: [laughter]

BONANNO: So it's one of those things. I gotta tell you something else. I had a very bad experience with some preachers here in Atlanta when I first came in in 02:37:00'69. We had an election. Um, there was a brassiere company here, big brassiere company. They had a thousand people working on Piedmont Avenue. It's not there anymore. Um, and I found the thing already in progress when I came in, the campaign. It looked like a loser, but one of my assistants -- an assistant -- I had two at that time, came and said, 'I think I can get -- they are mostly Afro-American. I can get the preachers to come in to help you organize.' I said, 'Yeah' -- The idea was -- I said, 'Okay, let's try it, but I don't know that I want it to be the religious connotation, but these people work, and they go to their churches and maybe a Sunday sermon might help or something.' And 02:38:00there were supposed to be five of them coming to meet with me at the office, the one on Plaster Avenue. And only four showed up. And so after we got through with the pleasantries, they said, well, it'd take five thousand dollars. I said, 'Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Ah, you know, in my union, we watch our money very closely. What, what's the five thousand dollars?' 'Well, there were going to be five of us here, a thousand dollars for each church.' I said, 'What—how, what, what, what--the church, donation or what?' 'Oh, no, no, no, 02:39:00we for us, disposable, have expenses.' I said, 'Now, wait a minute. That doesn't sound right. I said what's the union going to get?' 'Well, we'll come and make a speech, a sermon and so on.' And I said, 'Well, wait a minute now. I tell you, I'll spend ten thousand dollars, you give me young people, the cars, they're going to do house visiting. They were paid on a salary to do a job -- we'll give them a salary and expenses, gasoline or whatever.' No, no, no, they went into a caucus. I went back to my office because it was my assistant at that time. They went in his office. I was skeptical to begin with. Then we got back together after a period, a short period of time. And they said, 'Okay, 02:40:00four thousand.' In other words, screw the guy that didn't show.

LUTZ: Oh [Laughter.]

BONNANO: Then I knew what I had. I said, 'Well, fellows, I'll tell you what, I'll give each one of your churches a hundred dollars.' 'Well, we have to go back to our elders.'

LUTZ: Yeah [laughter]

BONANNO: I never heard from them. P.S. We lost the election. P.P.S., we wouldn't have won it with them. On the other hand, I must say this -- [Interruption. Recorder off, then on.] Coretta Scott King has been -- over the years -- was good for us. We would….ah…we'd get word to her about an election or something. She'd send a letter out to the workers. Haven't done it 02:41:00recently, I mean, she got…but earlier on.

LUTZ: She's got family problems now.

BONANNO: Yeah, sure, ten, fifteen years ago. She would cooperate, send a letter saying, 'My husband' -- you know -- and try to affect the outcome of an election in our favor. How effective it was, depending on where it was, depending on what the experiences were, we have been helped by some civil rights leaders, and we have been hurt by some, depending on where it was and what the situation was. But no one thing makes a successful organizing campaign. And no campaign is successful unless the people themselves want to help themselves. So, if it 02:42:00ain't ready, it ain't ready. And sometimes when it is ready, the lawyers and the slick artists that are doing a job on America, politically, can do a job on the workers in the shop, because they cloud the issues, they get them all confused. And it's not a question of whether it's right or wrong anymore. It's a question of fear. It's a question of will I be able to pay the bills, and will this company move out? Will it close down? Then, where will I be? So that's today's America and today's problem insofar as organizing is concerned. 02:43:00And yet it wasn't easy in the old days. I mean, when you went into a town, you didn't only fight the employer. You fought all the community, the employers of that community. Years ago, I went into a town called Johnson, South Carolina. There was a brassiere factory there, and company was union in New York. And I went in to demand that this fellow, uh, I, I'd been talking to Dubinsky. He was president then, that he'd bring the conditions down to Johnson. I walked in, and no sooner than I walk in, here come five or six guys, aaah, around us. And I sat down with the employer and the oil man, the drygoods guy, the pharmacist, 02:44:00the sheriff -- you know -- 'Why, the hell don't you get out?' And they are telling me in front of this guy. There was just enough chairs for them. After the meeting was over, I went back to Columbia. We had an office on Lady and Bull there, a one-room office, Lady and Bull Street, in Columbia, South Carolina. Bull Street also happens to be the street where it used to be the State Insane Asylum. Yeah. I said. I called Dubinsky up and I said, 'They followed me to the county line.' They used to do that. They'd make sure you got out of their county. And I said, 'President Dubinsky, I think I was set up.' And I told him the story. I said, 'There was just enough chairs for these guys. How did they know -- How come -- in the waiting room of this plant? And 02:45:00their complaint was, 'Hey, it's a big peach county--or was -- I guess it still is a peach center. They said, 'We pay our people seventy-five cents to pick a -- And you guys pay seventy-five cents an hour. What are you coming in here spoiling our game?' It was, you know, so, it was bad enough that they had to pay seventy-five cents an hour. That's what they said. Because we don't pay them that much an hour to pick our peaches. I had the same thing in Bishop, Lee County, South Carolina, um, -- terrible, terrible – uh, there it was -- the community was so well organized. We went to give a leaflet out and there was a 02:46:00wall of men to prevent us from giving the leaflets. Cops, businessmen, husbands. [coughing]

LUTZ: Was this like random husbands -- husbands of the people who worked there?

BONANNO: No, husbands they brought them to work, and they stayed to protect them against us.

LUTZ: Well, hey, you were Peeping Toms.

BONANNO: Yeah, well, but they didn't know about that. That was before -- But they -- Then, they were going to have a meeting of all the workers in the Lee County Courthouse, a public building. And I got wind of it, but then they also send word to me, this Barry Roughin, Ruskin, or something like that. I'm sure he's gone to his just desserts. They sent word to me that I couldn't go to the meeting. And, uh, then I got word that I could go to the meeting, but I 02:47:00couldn't take the floor. I couldn't speak. And so, it was, a fellow named John, he's passed on now – the, he was a student out of Dubinsky's training institute, as a matter of fact. And he was traveling with me. I was the expert. I'd been around for three years. And, so, I said, let's go to the courthouse. There you have all the workers. All the businessmen were in the jury box. And the attorneys are scurrying lies at the union, all kinds of bad things, really. What do you want to do? Chase this company out of Lee County 02:48:00or -- Then he said, this was the crowning blow. And, I, I sat here and John sat there, one seat apart, so that we could look at each other from the angle. We sat towards the back, but sure enough two guys go sit behind us, one behind me, one behind him. And I'm looking at his guy; he's looking at my guy. They were sheriffs. They had the badges and the guns. And, um, this fancy attorney in town says, 'I understand we have some union men in the courthouse today. Would they like to say something?'

LUTZ: Talk? [laughter]

BONANNO: I'd been told you can't, so I get up, and I said, 'Yes, I'd like to say a few words.' And I told them how people working for a living like this are making more money in better conditions, and that we would like to bring those 02:49:00conditions to Bishop. And we had no purpose other than that and that these people had a right under law to organize into unions for their own benefit. Finally, he didn't let me talk too long, and he said, 'If you like the way you are living, you'd better leave Bishop -- or Lee County.' I mean, he told me out in public. If you want your head on your shoulders, get out now. It kind of broke the meeting up.

LUTZ: Yeah, that puts a damper on the discussion. [laughter]BONANNO: John and I got in the car. We kind of -- And these two fellows were following us -- Get in the car, and we start to go back to Columbia, and they follow us all the way to 02:50:00the county line. I mean, I thought they were going to stop us, but we got back to Columbia. The next day, two or three guys come to the office in Columbia, and they were husbands. I didn't know who they were. They asked -- They said, 'We're from Bishop.' And I said, 'Oh, Jeez, here we go.' He said, 'We want you to know something. It took a lot of guts to do what you did up there, and any time you want to come to Lee County, here, call us. We'll ride shotgun for you.' I said, 'Okay, thanks a lot.' [laughter] I didn't want their damn shotguns. P.S., we organized that factory eventually, some years later, and it 02:51:00wasn't a bad place. But they just -- I think the lawyer had passed on or moved on or something. They just -- It's a mindset, especially in the smaller towns, a mindset, that these young ladies and, uh, young men, if you ever gave them a little bit of freedom and liberty and an idea, they are going to turn the, the status quo upside down, and they might take over; and, you know, that wasn't our purpose in life. But it was kind of a side issue that would come up, and we would get involved in elections and so on and so forth. But they wanted to be 02:52:00big fish in a little pond, and they wanted no competition. So, we, we had that happen to us quite a few times.

LUTZ: Suppose you had a roomful of, um, young men and ladies that you could get up on a podium and say what you wanted to for a couple of minutes. What advice would you give them?

BONANNO: Um

LUTZ: Labor advice?

BONANNO: If you are in it to make money, get out of it.

LUTZ: [laughter]

BONANNO: If you have a desire to improve society, and if you are satisfied with psychic remuneration, then, this is what you should be doing. If you like people, basically. If you think that the world would be a better place if people were treated decently, and if they made a living with the honest sweat of 02:53:00their brow, and you could help them do that, and that's what you want to do, then the labor movement is the place to be. If you are looking for something easy to do, it ain't the place to be. If you are looking for something where you are going to get kudos and bonuses and recognition, forget about it. There's only one George Meany. There's only one Dubinsky. There's only one Kirkland, and he got the wrong kind of kudos at the end. But most of us who work, labor in the vineyards, as they say, and do it without too much recognition, without too much money, without too much of anything. My father 02:54:00was an officer of this union called the ILG, and he never rose any higher than a Business Agent. He didn't live long enough to see me become a vice president, but that would have been, in his mind, the ultimate for me to be a vice-president of the ILGW. He never dreamt in his own mind that he could be. But maybe he had a thought for me. But there are thousands of guys who have given blood, sweat, and tears to build this movement in this country, whose names will never be inscribed on walls or plaques or anything else, and it takes 02:55:00thousands, and it is going to take thousands more to keep it alive and keep it going. That's okay and you want to do that, then this is the place to do it, in the movement, to do it, to keep this country free, really free. Because what's happening now in Washington is a dictatorship of the worst kind. When, when they say 'black,' they mean 'white,' when they say 'white,' they mean grey or blue or something. I dunno. There was a time when – when I was in Bishop. I was really afraid for America when this guy said to me, 'If you like the way you're living, get out of town.' I ended up saying to my buddy riding with me, John Ricardi was his name, a handsome devil -- He looked like Errol Flynn, 02:56:00handsome devil-- got all the girls.

LUTZ: There's always one in the crowd. [laughter]

BONANNO: And, um, I said, 'John, I'm afraid this country is ready for a Mussolini or a Hitler.' And, you know, I'm almost afraid of that now. When I see a phony like Newt Gingrich getting so far on lies and distortions of the truth, it's frightening. It absolutely is frightening. And if that's what these young people in this supposed audience that I have, if that's what they fear and are afraid of, the Labor Movement is the place to stop that kind of nonsense. So that's what I would say, and a hell of a lot more, probably.

LUTZ: Let me ask one Barbara Walters question, and we'll go eat.

BONANNO: Yeah.

LUTZ: Anything you'd do over again, for better or worse, or like to live over again?

BONANNO: Let me tell you what I said at the last board meeting of the ILGW. I'm the senior VP -- I was the senior VP of the, uh, the Board, the GDB of the ILG, and it turns out that I am the senior guy now on the Unite Board. Ahh, it only means that I've lived longer, or I got to be a vice president sooner than most of these other guys. I've got…I've been a vice president of the ILG since '71. I…Jay -- President Mazur asked me, said 'Nick,' to close the meeting, he said, 'Do you have any i…thoughts?' and I said, 'Yeah, I guess so.' I said, 02:58:00'It's been a hell of a ride, forty-five years. It's had its high moments and its low moments, its ups and its downs, but there's not a thing I would have done in any other way.' That's probably the same thing I'd say to you now.