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sixteen Junius Shortly after I got out, President Kennedy delivered a nationwide address on TV about James Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi, and all the riots and violence that were going on down there. President Kennedy started off the speech by saying he wanted to thank all those who had fought for so many years to break down segregation in the schools, and he went on and on, and it sounded to me like he was singling out our North Carolina Communist Party. I can’t quote the speech accurately, but I think he said the nation owed these people a debt of gratitude. It was quite an extraordinarily moving speech, almost to be picked out in this way. When I came out of jail, I had a job waiting for me. Those monthly donations for my dues to the Typographers Union had preserved my means of making a living. The New York newspaper strike was on, and there was no news about my release. I got a job at the New York Times, and the very first day I was working, the guy I was reading proofs with said, “You know, there’s a big political case about a guy named Scales. Is he any relation to you?” And he was rather flabbergasted to find out that I was the Scales he knew about. He was a right-wing guy, but it turns out he’d been contributing to my dues, too. I had thought of trying to resume my education just before I went into the clink and had applied to Teacher’s College at Columbia. I thought I’d go back and get a master’s in education if I could. I thought it might be satisfying to teach at some level. I was honest with them and told them my whole background. Up until then, I was in like Flynn. But after it went to the top A RED FAMILY 123 university brass, I got a nasty letter from the president saying that they would process my application no further until my “litigation” with the government was ended. I felt this was a pretty good indication of what would happen if I tried an academic career: get a job in a tenth-rate college and kick around from pillar to post, and put my family in thrall for years while I got my Ph.D. I decided they’d been through enough—and so I’m a union printer. Politically , I’m a peculiar brand of ex-Communist. I feel sort of radical, but I don’t know. I’m amazed at, and out of tune with, most of the radical movements on American campuses, I suppose. Leaving the Party was such a trauma—I mean, it just pulled the rug out from under us. The trauma of an internal fight like that was so strong, and the realization of the way we had been compromised and had compromised ourselves. We were all political wrecks with no place to go, and not much to do, and more in danger of ruining anything political we touched. You know, people say, “All you have to do is get active!” I can’t even be politically active in my union, because all it would take is some judicious red-baiting, and I’d be a liability to any activity I was involved in. So we found ourselves out of things and discredited politically, and rightly so. We couldn’t agree more. Some of us tried to pick up academic or professional careers. A very few did who hadn’t been in the field before. One friend of mine taught philosophy after a thirty-year hiatus. Another friend became a very distinguished psychologist. Some of us who had professional careers before, resumed them, but most weren’t able to or didn’t. I wasn’t able to. I couldn’t go back and pick up the loose ends of my academic career. I hadn’t been at Columbia, I had been at the University of North Carolina, and if I tried to go back into the academic world, I would either have to go back and start there or start from scratch. If I started there, I’d put everybody who tried to help me in a terrible spot. Here’s a convicted felon, and so on. Most people didn’t have that to contend with. So I don’t know. We’re a...

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