Full Text of the Excerpt

MARY FREDERICKSON:

There were some people from Brookwood Labor College; did you hear about Brookwood?

SAM FINLEY:

A.J. Mursky, for one?

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Right. Did you meet him? Did you talk to him?

SAM FINLEY:

Yes. I liked him all right.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

He was Dutch, I believe.

VESTA FINLEY:

Well anyway, we had a man that went to that Brookwood School up there; Mr. Ayet and his wife went there. Gracie-she's dead now-she went to summer school. And then she went to Bryn Mawr. They had a school there. But Mr. Ayet went to Brookwood.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember him talking about it? What did he think of it?

VESTA FINLEY:

Well, he never did make any. . . . Well, he enjoyed being up there, and he thought it was a great experience going. But as far as him a doing any talking much about it, he didn't have an occasion to; except just from person to person you don't hear much. I think maybe he learned something up there about the communists. It was up there they had some too. But he didn't ever talk too very much about it.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did he try to do any organizing or anything when he came back?

VESTA FINLEY:

He didn't, no.

SAM FINLEY:

No.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was it all over by then, or. . . .

VESTA FINLEY:

More or less.

SAM FINLEY:

There wasn't much organizing done after these people got killed. It just kind of passed away.

VESTA FINLEY:

But Mrs. Ayet and me made rugs together. We got burlap, and we went to these hosiery mills and bought these second tops-I mean, they didn't use them as throw-aways; rather they sold them to people. And we dyed them. We made rugs and shipped them all over the country: New York and places.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

To raise money for the. . . .

VESTA FINLEY:

No, for making money for ourselves [laughter]