Sister Mary William discusses the importance of Marillac House

Studs Terkel Well, we hear that word "commitment" so often and how often is it really put into practice? You know, we hear of the white community finally awakening to the situation in our society. We hear so much about civilizing the rest of the world. We hear so much about helping them, we, the white people. Sister Mary William is at Marillac House. Marillac House is right in the heart of the Black ghetto, 2822 West Jackson. Sister Mary William was part of the order of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. When you hear this phrase, I'm sure you come across so many well-meaning people to those less well-meaning, they say, "Oh, we must do something." What's your first reaction, Sister Mary William?

Sister Mary William My first reaction is to the preposition, rather to the pronoun "we." Who do you mean by "we?" "We" Americans, or "we" white people, or "we" haves, or "we" social workers? Because it is in the history of mankind, Studs, as you know, that the criteria for right is always very subjective. It's what I am. And so "we must do something" I think really has to be changed to "we must be something." You know, if you take the word "commitment," and it's certainly thrown around a lot today, you take it, it's Latin and it's derivative: Com, with, sent; That which is sent with. And as a Daughter of Charity, as religious, I have felt always that my commitment was not of my own choosing but rather God's special calling to me which is manifest through the duties to which I am assigned, but also the people who come into my life and the people whose lives I share. So they are my commitment. It is not a matter of a set rules and then I turn it off if it doesn't fit in with my bag, but rather the people whose lives I touch and who touch my lives. And when you're committed, you let yourself be open and naked, if I can use the term, to be part of many people's lives. But as a wise old sister once said to me, "He who lives in many lives a thousand times must die." The test of commitment is how many times are you willing to die. Not how many times are you willing to go in and organize or plan or legislate for other people. But are you really willing to be with them even unto the point of death? And I think we've had this dramatically in Chicago in the last few days. But we at Marillac House out in Jackson Boulevard have, I guess, been in kind of a microcosm of what has happened in the big Northern cities over the last 13 years. When our sisters came to Marillac House, which, by the way, was an Episcopalian orphanage 20 years ago, the neighborhood was 95 percent white and about 90 percent Catholic, and there were no services in the area, and this is why St. Mary's Episcopal Home for Girls was purchased and it became Marillac Settlement House. And then the neighborhood changed, but it changed for a different reason 20 years ago. It was after the war and people had money, but the housing wasn't available. So as housing was available, the white people of the community moved to Skokie and Wheaton and so on. And the vacuum was filled by the Negro who also had made money during the war and he wanted to get out of the South Side strip. So the changing, racial change was not done on the push and hostile basis and the feeling tone was much different than it is now.

Studs Terkel You used the words, pardon me, you used the word, you said "feeling tone."

Sister Mary William Feeling tone. Yes. This is really, I guess maybe, this is something that in our work is extremely important, much more important than the plan or the editorial in some of our leading

Studs Terkel Let me ask you where you got that phrase, the "feeling tone," when you first heard of it?

Sister Mary William I don't know where I first heard of it, but I know some people say, "You fly by the seat of your pants." Well, that isn't too dignified for a sister to say, so "feeling tone" is about the same thing.

Studs Terkel The reason I ask you that is because it hit me, there's an elderly Negro woman I know who used the phrase. There's such a thing as a "feeling tone." Either you have it or you don't.

Sister Mary William That's

Studs Terkel It could be friendly, it could be hostile, but if you haven't got it, you're dead, baby.

Sister Mary William That's right. And you know, Studs, I guess this is really what the people have taught me, because there's no -- People who have had to preserve themselves by being sensitive to other people's reaction to them, like the Negro has, this is how the Negro has preserved himself. By being sensitive, not to the words or the gestures, but to the feeling tone. And he's preserved himself by being aggressive or submissive according to what the tone was coming across. Not the words, not the programs, not the plans, but the performance. And I suppose this is why I use the term, because this is a way we operate. We have to operate,

Studs Terkel I think, Sister Mary William, isn't it possible that as you're talking, and I know this going to be fantastic, I think that this is maybe a Negro phrase

Sister Mary William It, oh, well is. In fact, my mother accuses me of being two shades darker since I've been working here. The Negro people in our community have taught us a lot. But it isn't -- You don't get all hung up, Studs, on people being Negro. The thing that our religion and our faith has taught us is that they are children of God. And I would be just as responsible to have the feeling tone of the Mexican-American, or

Studs Terkel -- Puerto Rican.

Sister Mary William The Puerto Rican, or whoever it was, and they'd have a different word, and I'd have to use their

Studs Terkel Or a WASP child somewhere benighted in the white ghetto that is a suburb.

Sister Mary William That's right. And so my responsibility is not only to serve, but to be able to communicate and know the value system of the people with whom I am working. And if they use the term "feeling tone" and many other terms they use, I know I pick up, we've all picked up, because it's the language of the ghetto, and we work in the ghetto. If I was over in Vietnam, I would have to pick up enough Vietnamese phrases to communicate, and "feeling tone," and "like it is," and "I'm not in that bag," and all of these

Studs Terkel Isn't it very interesting, the very language that young people use today. So many of the idioms that are so colorful are really Negro in origin. We talk about con-- You know, I'm sure you often hear this phrase from, not colleagues of yours, but people you meet in the middle-class community now and then when you go out there, is "What have they really, why don't they contribute as much?" And the contributions, of course, are fantastic, to our language, to our culture, to our music.

Sister Mary William And to the richness. One of the things I think that the Negro, I don't step back enough, because if I haven't gone down to the Loop, say, for about a month, and I walk down there, I get a terrible funny feeling of being in a foreign land. Suddenly all those white faces sort of scare me, because I'm so used to being surrounded by all Negro faces, that you kind of aren't sure of the land you're in. Not that you deny your own culture, I'm white middle-class and you can't deny that, but the people have a way of communicating to you and they have a tremendous endurance. Studs, let me say this, that if I were in like circumstances, a Negro woman of my age living in the ghetto, I couldn't have survived for two weeks. They've survived in spite of things for three hundred years and they're going to continue to. Survival is one of their beautiful, beautiful attributes. The thing that will attack survival more than anything else is the thing that we in the northern urban areas must understand and not contribute to any more than we have, and that's bitterness. You see, nobody could destroy them, but they could destroy themselves if bitterness took place. And this is what happens. For years they were down on the cotton fields, and they were deprived of some of the very basic things like education and identity, and so on. But there was always the Promised Land. The more aggressive people picked up stakes and got on a bus, or a little piece of a car, and came up to the Promised Land, and now they're up here and they're packed in, and they're hungry, and they're cold. And when you're hungry and you're cold, as Charles Brown says, "When you're hungry and cold in the Promised Land, then what do you do? And what do you hope for?" And this is the thing that we in Chicago are facing. And I say "we" and I mean Negro and white. I mean poor and rich. I mean whether you're living in suburbia, Chicago, or whether you're living right in the central city, because until we can face the reality, that unless we can really make this the Promised Land, not just for the few but for the "us." And we quit talking in terms of "they," they.

Studs Terkel This began when I deliberately said we and they, and you picked up on that, of course. You -- If we can return to this theme, I will come to you and your mother, too, in a moment. If we return to this theme, so post-World War II, then, whites moved out, and to some ex-- Relatively middle-class Negroes had moved in. That was at that time.

Sister Mary William At that time. And so we helped them set up a program of organizing the traditional block clubs. And because leadership moves out first in any organization, you know, leadership moves out first and you develop then -- This is true in businesses, the need to develop leadership at all times, because your leadership are the ones who move on. So we had block clubs and had beautiful garden parties and alley fairs and so on and there was a middle-class neighborhood and the program in Marillac House, which was certainly mammoth, didn't really change much because it appealed to the same class of people who saw the same needs and had the same value system.

Studs Terkel Middle-class

Sister Mary William Middle-class people. Then, of course, the University of Illinois decided not to take the Garfield Park but took the Circle Campus area. The line had been held in West Garfield because the people out there felt that if the university came in, this would stop the Negro progression West. So panic selling took place. And in one block on Van Buren, the 4300 on Van Buren, one of our sisters, her mother lived there. In September of '64, the first Negro family moved in, and February '65 she was the only white person left on the block. So there was sort of a mass exodus of the middle-class Negro to, in quotes, better neighborhood. And the vacant spots were filled with a poorer class Negro, and many of the middle-class Negroes then became the absentee landlords which they had condemned for the white. The real problem, Studs, is not really one of color. It's not race, it's class.

Studs Terkel It's

Sister Mary William We begrudge people being poor, and I think you've brought this out.

Studs Terkel Well, we can't, you know, the ad-- We can never accept failure. That it is a sin. It is a sin to be a material failure.

Sister Mary William That's right. That's right. It's the wrath of God upon you, to be a material failure.

Studs Terkel And therefore you've deserved it.

Sister Mary William That's right. And you've sinned. And anybody, you know, can make it if they try hard enough.

Studs Terkel So this is interesting, then, it's the question of the poor as against the haves. Although I suppose in the case of someone Black, there's the double-cross, I didn't mean to pun there, but that's as it is. There's the double burden, poor and Black.

Sister Mary William Black. That's right.

Studs Terkel Although we know the white poor, certainly in Uptown, are

Sister Mary William Are suffering. And then there has developed over the last, I would say eight years, I see it strengthening in Chicago a culture of poverty, a group of people who are going to beget children who are condemned to poverty. In other generations

Studs Terkel The Oscar Lewis phrase.

Sister Mary William That's right. And in other generations, when our country began, you know, people came over here because they were poor. The rich didn't leave Europe to migrate to the United States, the poor did. And they came over and there was land, and land to be settled. Then the next step was that we needed muscle because we wanted to develop our railroads and our factories, and in the 1920s when they stopped immigration, or they limited immigration, then the Depression came and then the war broke out. And so the in-migration took place, because we needed hands and we needed muscle for the war. Well then, the poor who had been on the cotton field was released, but he was in the North. But now there is no step out of poverty. We are -- We have no other step out of poverty but welfare, which is so highly condemned, so criticized, so punitive in our society. It is one of the most degradating systems that has ever been perpetuated on a people, because it says you are wrong until you can prove yourself right. You can only have the minimal substance, you can have no dreams. You can't like nice shirts and nice ties. You can only subsist, and that usually on corn meal and minimal things, and I don't blame the welfare system, I blame the mentality of America, which permits the kind of welfare legislation in the state

Studs Terkel Again, the whole welfare system is premised on the idea that you have sinned, you are poor

Sister Mary William That's right.

Studs Terkel That's why you will be punished.

Sister Mary William And you've got to prove, you've got to make yourself eligible by conforming. And the minute you start to better yourself, then immediately any kind of help has to be removed from you, so keep yourself "un-bettered," if I can coin a phrase, so the poor, really, we must look into ourselves because we are from the poor. We are poor stock. We are, we are from Europe, and we have come over, we are from the poor, and this is one of the reasons we're so sensitive to the poor, because our parents taught us that was the worst thing in the world.

Studs Terkel Of course. They had, they felt lack of sense of personal worth.

Sister Mary William That's right.

Studs Terkel And only when they became personally worthy is when they made it.

Sister Mary William That's right. That's right. And when they could have the material, the objective material things to show that they were not dependent upon others. And so that to have a house and to have a car and to see that their children had an education so that their children could -- Why in America do we have our children get an education, not that they develop as a person to the fullness of this wonderful soul God has given them, but they can get a better job? And so a boy who goes to Harvard has a better chance of getting a better job than a boy who goes to a local small local college. So parents make great sacrifices to get their kids into Harvard. Why? That they want him to develop more fully as a man? Naw, they want him to get a better job.

Studs Terkel You know, a discovery was made by one of the teachers who lives at Ecumenical Institute, not too far from where you are, Judy Huff, I call her in the book, husband's a young minister, she's teaching at Marshall High, which is 99.99 percent Black. And she says many of the young teachers find it far more exciting and challenging than teaching in a suburban school. She says, "There's less cheating, for one thing, at a ghetto school than there is in a suburban school. There's less need to get that as the, that of getting ahead." In other words, the bright kids, nobody cheats from.

Sister Mary William That's right.

Studs Terkel And the other thing is, this matter, they haven't got the same value set up as the kid in the suburbs, "I'm going to make it, no matter what." You know? The grade'll do it.

Sister Mary William That's right. And all I have to do is get the grade and serve the ideals of my parents and have the material things, and what I am as a person doesn't really have that much

Studs Terkel So your -- Aren't you, Sister Mary William is our guest, Sister Mary William of Marillac House, that this matter of "culturally deprived," who is culturally deprived?

Sister Mary William That's a good question. I think that I've lived in a so-called ghetto for 13 years, and I guess a lot of people would say I'm culturally deprived. I got a master's degree. But we were kidding before, they said something about taping a symphony and I said, "What's a symphony?" I really do know what a symphony is, I really do, but that's not part of my environment. I don't deal in terms of symphonies. I deal in terms of survival. I deal with people who, if they have today's food and this week's rent, life is good, and takes all their human resources to get these things. Would you say then that they are culturally deprived? I don't know if they really are, I don't know if this -- I'm not, I would never canonize poverty.

Studs Terkel Now, I was curious when I said that, I was being ironic, too, isn't someone, a young white kid living in Marquette Park or Cicero culturally deprived, or the child who lives in Glencoe, or whoever he may be, who is taught that he is, you know, definitely of another class, superior. Isn't there a cultural deprivation?

Sister Mary William Yes, and you see, one of the -- The greatest depriva-- We are a deprived people, because the cross-section of America as you have so well said, is such a rich thing. The Negro, the poor Negro, has his stamina which perhaps the kid out in Glencoe really needs to experience, and the youngster down in our ghetto needs to experience the aspiration and the intolerance of failure which is a good thing from the kid in Glencoe. But we've so bagged ourselves, we so cut ourselves off from each other, this is wherein our great deprivation comes from. It isn't that we don't lack richness in our society, is we so come -- It's like having wonderful ingredients: Good eggs, good butter, good flour, but keeping it all in its bags and boxes and not letting it mix with each other. You're never really going to produce that wonderful angel food cake. Well, we've done this in our -- We're afraid. One of the eggs we're afraid to mix in with the flour, you know, because they might lose their identity.

Studs Terkel How do you, we'll ask you more about Marillac House itself, and

Sister Mary William Right now it's a mess.

Studs Terkel It's a menace.

Sister Mary William A mess!

Studs Terkel Oh, it's a mess! I thought a, well, it's a menace, too, I

Sister Mary William It's a mess, too. It's a menace, too, and it's a mess most of the time. I really can't say it's just now. It's like Noah's Ark, Studs. We have two of everything, and I think we have three of a few things. It's a settlement

Studs Terkel In what manner is it a mess?

Sister Mary William Well, you know when you're going to say, "I will stand and be ready to respond to need," it's not an orderly way to live, because then you know who's calling the shots? The people who have the need, not some preconceived program developed by sociologists, you know, and approved with a federal grant of a couple of thou -- Million with a triplicate copy having been sent in to justify everything. It's when the people come in and say, "Today, we need this." And so we develop a program to take care of that need.

Studs Terkel You know, you said something that, again, fascinated me, you said, "Not an orderly way," this word "order," whether it's law and order or order, you know. I guess the most orderly state is death, isn't it? Death is the most orderly state there is,

Sister Mary William No, no.

Studs Terkel No?

Sister Mary William No, I disagree with you. The most orderly state in the criteria for all order must be love.

Studs Terkel Oh, I was -- We're speaking in two different wavelengths here.

Sister Mary William All right. Get the feeling tone, get the feeling

Studs Terkel There's a phrase here that, I think Dr. King used, a creative disorder.

Sister Mary William That's right.

Studs Terkel I'm talking about order as used by the establishment.

Sister Mary William That's right. Status quo, keep things the way we are. Be sure we're calling the shots. We set the value

Studs Terkel 'Cause I was afraid I was getting into a theological argument with Sister Mary William. That was, go ahead.

Sister Mary William No, but I wanted to get that in, because people are afraid to operate on love. They have to operate on what costs most, or what costs least, or what achieves those things, where the power, you know, we're so power-crazy in our country. That's one of the reasons why people want good jobs, so they can be in a power position, so they can call shots, you know. I wonder if we would say, "Look, all I want to do is really serve, and I don't care whether I get paid for it or not."

Studs Terkel Yet isn't power within an individual? And if we could perhaps even use this phrase "Black power" for a moment, the creative aspects of it, power within a person. Don't you feel that the violence that comes out of people who are power-less and thus frustrated?

Sister Mary William That's right.

Studs Terkel When a person feels powerful, or has a voice in his community, then there is far less violence.

Sister Mary William That's right. And when a person feels that he can really govern his own life and his family, that he really has his hand on the till of his own ship, if I can say this, then he is much less prone to destruction of that which is around him and destruction of himself. You know the riots that are taking place, people are destroying their own neighborhood, and when you sit and listen to young and old, they keep saying, "It doesn't make sense, Sister. It doesn't make sense. They're, we're destroying our own neighborhood." This one teen, who was, I was quite surprised she was not looting Friday night when all of the thing broke loose, and she knew I was surprised, too, and she laughed at me. We were sitting there, watching a looting take place across the street at a little store and she said, "Now, you know, Sister, this doesn't make sense." She said, "When they killed Kennedy, the white people didn't go out and destroy their neighborhood." She said, "But what can you do, what can you do when you pain the way our people pain?" She said, "It's not that everybody backed Dr. King, but at least he was a voice, he was somebody that the establishment recognized and now they've taken even him. Who will they recognize?"

Studs Terkel Isn't it also true, ironically true, that when property is destroyed and the establishment looks around, not when man is, when property is, and suddenly there is the fear is, gee, the property is being destroyed. And maybe Congress, maybe the city fathers, I use the word small F for the city fathers in this case, you know, but take action, isn't that the ironic aspect, too?

Sister Mary William It is, and it's ironic in this much, that I can say this, Studs, thousands of kids have been and destroyed in that neighborhood for eight years. Seven out of every 10 kids get dropped out or pushed out of high school in that neighborhood. And you know, there's been no big wave of white sympathy or about that. And isn't that much more a destruction than the burning of a shoe store?

Studs Terkel Isn't that the phrase, called institutional, institutional racism, the institutional destruction of lives of people, the very birth, the violence, violated the very day they're born. Now here again, the "they," I speak now of the have-not people.

Sister Mary William I think, too. And in this Kerner's report, you know, the report on the riots brought this out, that our greatest problem, our greatest challenge, is not programs but it's attitudes, and attitudes exist in individuals and it's luxurious to work with on an individual basis. We want to do everything mass, in mass. But you don't change attitudes by mass interpretation, but rather on an individual basis. And the term "they," whether I'm talking to a group of white people, then I know they're referring to our people in our community, or whether I'm talking to a group of block club people or a group of teens around Marillac House, and they -- It's funny, they use the same term for each other, "they." And last year I remember giving a talk and asking, the wouldn't it be great by the end of the summer if we could have eliminated that pronoun "they," and think in terms of "we."

Studs Terkel How did you, now if we could come, you said your mother a moment ago, your mother had some disagreement with you, quite obviously, about life in the big city.

Sister Mary William Well, I -- She doesn't, really. She's a darling Irish woman who came over from Tipperary and she's the essence of refinement and lace-curtain Irish, and so was my father. We were raised in a very conservative neighborhood, which -- And you know, we didn't realize it was conservative. The same neighbors are still living in the houses where -- They were living there when I was born. And the idea was that you got a good education. You lived your faith fully. You did well and bettered yourself. In other words, you had to live in a better neighborhood than you and the parents were now living in, but it was a nice neighborhood, and you kept to yourself and you kept your dignity and you weren't dependent upon anybody. But I think -- And then, I don't know why, they produced me and that was really, you know, I guess there's always one in every crowd, in every litter. Well, I was it. And when I was four years old, I had two -- An older brother and a sister, and then a younger brother, and we went up to my uncle, who was a pastor in a small town in Iowa, and his housekeeper made the best sugar cookies I've ever tasted in my life, Studs. So my mother said, now I was not to go and ask for any more sugar cookies. So see, I had a problem. I liked sugar cookies. I wanted sugar cookies. I would not disobey my mother, and I had enough of that good old Irish Catholic fear in me. But I spent most of my life figuring out how to obey and get around her. And she spent most of her life being around the corner when I came around her. So anyhow, and then a hobo, a gentleman of the road showed up, and the housekeeper gave him a sandwich and four butter cookies and a cup of coffee, and he sat on the pump, you know, how a stoop around the pump? So, four-year-old Annie here says, "Aha!" So I went over and I sat next to him and I told him it was a nice day, wasn't it. And then he said, yes, and I can remember he had a beard and I wouldn't, you know, a four-year-old, you don't -- But I can remember the beard because I hadn't seen men with beards. But anyhow, we began to talk and I began to praise the butter cookies. So he gave me two. So my mother looked out the window and here was her darling daughter sitting next to the gentleman of the road consuming butter cookies so you could be obedient and still get around things. And I guess this has been sort of my way of life. You ask and I know a lot of people say, "Why did you become a sister?" Well, I never thought I could. You see, the traditional was the religious who went in and who prayed a lot and who was very obedient and who was very conforming. And I went to school to sisters and they were very nice, and very refined, and very dedicated, and they kind of disappeared at three o'clock, you know, and then at eight o'clock the next morning, they appeared again. The fact that they had a life together was something that was a mystery. And although I had visited in convents, because I had aunts who were sisters, the whole idea, you know, wasn't so -- But this was the only way, being a sister was the only way, that I could fulfill something that had been brought into my life. I had tremendous parents, Studs, and they loved each other deeply. I can remember asking my father one time why he loved me, and he said, "Because you're the manifestation of my mother -- of mother's and my love." And I thought, they love so much and so deep and so practically, they really did. They didn't say it a lot. They lived their love for us. And I thought, "I have been loved. Now, how can I communicate this love with many others?" And if I were, if I married and had four or five children to myself, that would be a husband and four or five children, you know, and that would be my center and I would do it, but somehow or other that wasn't enough, and I wanted to love many, many people. And the way I could do it, and really do it practically, was by becoming a religious. You see, my mother and father were very good and very close to God and I didn't become a sister because I thought that would bring me closer to God, because they were they were so close to God. But that this was the way I was going to love many people. So when I was 15, a priest asked me about it and I laughed, I said I wasn't the type, and he said, "There is no type," and so I made up my mind then. Well, then the problem was convincing people, because when I told my father and mother, we were at the supper table and I said, "I want to be a sister." And my father said, "Yes, pass the biscuits." He really -- They weren't impressed, because they felt that I'd probably go in the community to be [unintelligible] and, you know, in two weeks things wouldn't go the way I wanted and I'd be home. That -- And when I graduated from high school I said "Well, now let's go," I wanted to be a sister, and my mother had given me good advice, though, she said, "Pray over it because it's a grace and don't talk about it." She said, "If you're normal now, a normal girl and you're a good student and so on, when the time comes to be a sister, you'll be a good sister, too." But I think that was good advice. And then my father was just a darling and he said, "Let me give you one piece of advice, Dolly." He used to call me Dolly. He said, "When you're down, don't ask yourself." He said, "When everything's going the way you want it, say now, do I want to be a sister?" And I can remember being on the top of the Chase Hotel in St. Louis and Hildegarde was there, and I was on the dance floor and I thought, now this is, you know, I -- This is really it, this is about it, and I had a real nice date and I was -- We had a convertible, I remember, and the top was down, and that was the thing in the day. And I said, "All right, now. Do you want to be a sister?" And I said, "Yes, I want to be a sister." And I was convinced and I came into the community, the Daughters of Charity, who were founded 300 years ago to serve the poor, and St. Vincent de Paul was a very practical man. At -- Nuns at that time were not serving the needs of the people. They were cloistered, and the poor had no one to serve them. So he took some good-willed little girls who wanted to really serve them, who wanted to love many people. I guess that's why he took me, too. And he had Louise de Marillac train them and they are very simple. You see, we're not nuns, we're sisters. You never take final vows. But the idea was that we take a fourth vow of service of the poor and for 300 years we have, and there's 43,000 of us all over the world. We have a tremendous tradition. So that I came into the community and I was trained to serve the poor. And that's for, but not in the sense of a paternalistic kind of a way. We are the servants of the poor -- Can I read you something?

Studs Terkel Please.

Sister Mary William Have we got time?

Studs Terkel Sure.

Sister Mary William This -- St. Vincent said this to Sister Jean, a young sister before she went to her first mission to the poor. And this is taken from a picture, "Monsieur Vincent," the movie, but this is very typical and this is something that we I hope, I think live today. "You will soon learn that charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and a basket of bread, but you must keep your gentleness and your smile. It's not enough to give soup and bread. The rich can do that. You are a little servant of the poor, the maid of charity, always smiling and in a good humor. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting, as you'll see. But the uglier and dirtier they are and the more unjust and bitter, the more you must give them of your love. It's only because of your love, only your love that the poor will forgive you the bread you give them." And this is a spirit in which the Daughters of Charity work. And this is the spirit in which I have

Studs Terkel But something has happened here with you and with your colleagues at Marillac House and certain sisters like you. There are sisters and sisters and orders and orders, you know, you challenge the establishment, now you see. This is the thing, you see.

Sister Mary William Christ did too, though, you know. He kind of went on after the establishment a few times, because you see, you must be free, be really free within yourself. Your commitment is to God, not to any power structure, and you must often stand for that which you believe is the Christ-like, the [theo?] reason for doing things, and if it isn't the going song, if it isn't the accepted thing, that's too bad and crucifixions still take place, you know, in various kinds of forms, but the idea of the whole thing is this: That God, the people of God, look at the way the Jewish people suffered and yet they had to believe that God called them as His people, and we as Christians feel that we are part of this. This is part of our inheritance, that we are part of the people of God and that we are called to treat everyone as God's children. We wouldn't have riots, Martin Luther King wouldn't have been shot, nor would have John F. Kennedy, if that for which we have been called were lived in people's hearts. It's mouthed but it is not lived.

Studs Terkel Of course, we know during the Sunday of Martin Luther King's death, a great deal of honeyed words, some meant, some not meant, were said over all the mass media, as some young minister said, he never heard so much hypocrisy in his life.

Sister Mary William As one person said as they heard a very prominent person of our city giving a eulogy from the city council on Martin Luther King

Studs Terkel -- I wonder who that -- I wonder who that would be.

Sister Mary William I don't know, the kid didn't tell me, he just quoted his reaction, and I wasn't one to press. He said, "Listen to that cat. Two years ago, when King came in here and tried to explain to him how we were painin', how we, we Black people were painin', he treated him like a boob." He said, "He couldn't help it then," he said, "but why does he have to stand up now with all that garbage?" You know? And this is the feeling in the heart: If he stood up, they can almost tolerate the man who is sticking to his guns and still condemning the Black man.

Studs Terkel They would rather face the outright racist, the outright

Sister Mary William That's right.

Studs Terkel Than the

Sister Mary William They can't stand the "not for real." You know, because being for real means a lot, and that's with us. It was interesting, over the weekend, going over to Madison, you know, 25, 26, 2700 Madison on Saturday when much of the looting was still going on. And to have a half-intoxicated not only with liquor, but with frustration and violence, a young adult man turn on you and say, "You're white, I hate you, go home before I have to kill you," and serve as that, having a white face so he could get it out of his system. Finally, he turned around, he says, "Please go home." And I said, "I'm going home, I'm just trying to get out of here. I came to see --" I said, "We heard a family was burned out and we're trying to find them to get them housing." And he says, "Now, what you doing that for?" I said, "'Cause they're burned out and they got kids." He says, "Yeah, but then that makes you nice." And I said, "I'm sorry about that, man," I said, "I can't do anything about being white, but I sure can do something about being nice."

Studs Terkel Or about being human.

Sister Mary William That's right. And he just went down the street shaking his head.

Studs Terkel He was shaking his head, that man was powerless.

Sister Mary William That's right.

Studs Terkel

Sister Mary William Well, we hear that word "commitment" so often and how often is it really put into practice? You know, we hear of the white community finally awakening to the situation in our society. We hear so much about civilizing the rest of the world. We hear so much about helping them, we, the white people. Sister Mary William is at Marillac House. Marillac House is right in the heart of the Black ghetto, 2822 West Jackson. Sister Mary William was part of the order of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. When you hear this phrase, I'm sure you come across so many well-meaning people to those less well-meaning, they say, "Oh, we must do something." What's your first reaction, Sister Mary William? My first reaction is to the preposition, rather to the pronoun "we." Who do you mean by "we?" "We" Americans, or "we" white people, or "we" haves, or "we" social workers? Because it is in the history of mankind, Studs, as you know, that the criteria for right is always very subjective. It's what I am. And so "we must do something" I think really has to be changed to "we must be something." You know, if you take the word "commitment," and it's certainly thrown around a lot today, you take it, it's Latin and it's derivative: Com, with, sent; That which is sent with. And as a Daughter of Charity, as religious, I have felt always that my commitment was not of my own choosing but rather God's special calling to me which is manifest through the duties to which I am assigned, but also the people who come into my life and the people whose lives I share. So they are my commitment. It is not a matter of a set rules and then I turn it off if it doesn't fit in with my bag, but rather the people whose lives I touch and who touch my lives. And when you're committed, you let yourself be open and naked, if I can use the term, to be part of many people's lives. But as a wise old sister once said to me, "He who lives in many lives a thousand times must die." The test of commitment is how many times are you willing to die. Not how many times are you willing to go in and organize or plan or legislate for other people. But are you really willing to be with them even unto the point of death? And I think we've had this dramatically in Chicago in the last few days. But we at Marillac House out in Jackson Boulevard have, I guess, been in kind of a microcosm of what has happened in the big Northern cities over the last 13 years. When our sisters came to Marillac House, which, by the way, was an Episcopalian orphanage 20 years ago, the neighborhood was 95 percent white and about 90 percent Catholic, and there were no services in the area, and this is why St. Mary's Episcopal Home for Girls was purchased and it became Marillac Settlement House. And then the neighborhood changed, but it changed for a different reason 20 years ago. It was after the war and people had money, but the housing wasn't available. So as housing was available, the white people of the community moved to Skokie and Wheaton and so on. And the vacuum was filled by the Negro who also had made money during the war and he wanted to get out of the South Side strip. So the changing, racial change was not done on the push and hostile basis and the feeling tone was much different than it is now. You used the words, pardon me, you used the word, you said "feeling tone." Feeling tone. Yes. This is really, I guess maybe, this is something that in our work is extremely important, much more important than the plan or the editorial in some of our leading newspapers. Let me ask you where you got that phrase, the "feeling tone," when you first heard of it? I don't know where I first heard of it, but I know some people say, "You fly by the seat of your pants." Well, that isn't too dignified for a sister to say, so "feeling tone" is about the same thing. The reason I ask you that is because it hit me, there's an elderly Negro woman I know who used the phrase. There's such a thing as a "feeling tone." Either you have it or you don't. That's It could be friendly, it could be hostile, but if you haven't got it, you're dead, baby. That's right. And you know, Studs, I guess this is really what the people have taught me, because there's no -- People who have had to preserve themselves by being sensitive to other people's reaction to them, like the Negro has, this is how the Negro has preserved himself. By being sensitive, not to the words or the gestures, but to the feeling tone. And he's preserved himself by being aggressive or submissive according to what the tone was coming across. Not the words, not the programs, not the plans, but the performance. And I suppose this is why I use the term, because this is a way we operate. We have to operate, too. I think, Sister Mary William, isn't it possible that as you're talking, and I know this going to be fantastic, I think that this is maybe a Negro phrase that It, oh, well is. In fact, my mother accuses me of being two shades darker since I've been working here. The Negro people in our community have taught us a lot. But it isn't -- You don't get all hung up, Studs, on people being Negro. The thing that our religion and our faith has taught us is that they are children of God. And I would be just as responsible to have the feeling tone of the Mexican-American, or -- Puerto Rican. The Puerto Rican, or whoever it was, and they'd have a different word, and I'd have to use their word. Or a WASP child somewhere benighted in the white ghetto that is a suburb. That's right. And so my responsibility is not only to serve, but to be able to communicate and know the value system of the people with whom I am working. And if they use the term "feeling tone" and many other terms they use, I know I pick up, we've all picked up, because it's the language of the ghetto, and we work in the ghetto. If I was over in Vietnam, I would have to pick up enough Vietnamese phrases to communicate, and "feeling tone," and "like it is," and "I'm not in that bag," and all of these things. Isn't it very interesting, the very language that young people use today. So many of the idioms that are so colorful are really Negro in origin. We talk about con-- You know, I'm sure you often hear this phrase from, not colleagues of yours, but people you meet in the middle-class community now and then when you go out there, is "What have they really, why don't they contribute as much?" And the contributions, of course, are fantastic, to our language, to our culture, to our music. And to the richness. One of the things I think that the Negro, I don't step back enough, because if I haven't gone down to the Loop, say, for about a month, and I walk down there, I get a terrible funny feeling of being in a foreign land. Suddenly all those white faces sort of scare me, because I'm so used to being surrounded by all Negro faces, that you kind of aren't sure of the land you're in. Not that you deny your own culture, I'm white middle-class and you can't deny that, but the people have a way of communicating to you and they have a tremendous endurance. Studs, let me say this, that if I were in like circumstances, a Negro woman of my age living in the ghetto, I couldn't have survived for two weeks. They've survived in spite of things for three hundred years and they're going to continue to. Survival is one of their beautiful, beautiful attributes. The thing that will attack survival more than anything else is the thing that we in the northern urban areas must understand and not contribute to any more than we have, and that's bitterness. You see, nobody could destroy them, but they could destroy themselves if bitterness took place. And this is what happens. For years they were down on the cotton fields, and they were deprived of some of the very basic things like education and identity, and so on. But there was always the Promised Land. The more aggressive people picked up stakes and got on a bus, or a little piece of a car, and came up to the Promised Land, and now they're up here and they're packed in, and they're hungry, and they're cold. And when you're hungry and you're cold, as Charles Brown says, "When you're hungry and cold in the Promised Land, then what do you do? And what do you hope for?" And this is the thing that we in Chicago are facing. And I say "we" and I mean Negro and white. I mean poor and rich. I mean whether you're living in suburbia, Chicago, or whether you're living right in the central city, because until we can face the reality, that unless we can really make this the Promised Land, not just for the few but for the "us." And we quit talking in terms of "they," they. This began when I deliberately said we and they, and you picked up on that, of course. You -- If we can return to this theme, I will come to you and your mother, too, in a moment. If we return to this theme, so post-World War II, then, whites moved out, and to some ex-- Relatively middle-class Negroes had moved in. That was at that time. At that time. And so we helped them set up a program of organizing the traditional block clubs. And because leadership moves out first in any organization, you know, leadership moves out first and you develop then -- This is true in businesses, the need to develop leadership at all times, because your leadership are the ones who move on. So we had block clubs and had beautiful garden parties and alley fairs and so on and there was a middle-class neighborhood and the program in Marillac House, which was certainly mammoth, didn't really change much because it appealed to the same class of people who saw the same needs and had the same value system. Middle-class people. Middle-class people. Then, of course, the University of Illinois decided not to take the Garfield Park but took the Circle Campus area. The line had been held in West Garfield because the people out there felt that if the university came in, this would stop the Negro progression West. So panic selling took place. And in one block on Van Buren, the 4300 on Van Buren, one of our sisters, her mother lived there. In September of '64, the first Negro family moved in, and February '65 she was the only white person left on the block. So there was sort of a mass exodus of the middle-class Negro to, in quotes, better neighborhood. And the vacant spots were filled with a poorer class Negro, and many of the middle-class Negroes then became the absentee landlords which they had condemned for the white. The real problem, Studs, is not really one of color. It's not race, it's class. It's We begrudge people being poor, and I think you've brought this out. Well, we can't, you know, the ad-- We can never accept failure. That it is a sin. It is a sin to be a material failure. That's right. That's right. It's the wrath of God upon you, to be a material failure. And therefore you've deserved it. That's right. And you've sinned. And anybody, you know, can make it if they try hard enough. So this is interesting, then, it's the question of the poor as against the haves. Although I suppose in the case of someone Black, there's the double-cross, I didn't mean to pun there, but that's as it is. There's the double burden, poor and Black. Black. That's right. Although we know the white poor, certainly in Uptown, are -- Are suffering. And then there has developed over the last, I would say eight years, I see it strengthening in Chicago a culture of poverty, a group of people who are going to beget children who are condemned to poverty. In other generations -- The Oscar Lewis phrase. That's right. And in other generations, when our country began, you know, people came over here because they were poor. The rich didn't leave Europe to migrate to the United States, the poor did. And they came over and there was land, and land to be settled. Then the next step was that we needed muscle because we wanted to develop our railroads and our factories, and in the 1920s when they stopped immigration, or they limited immigration, then the Depression came and then the war broke out. And so the in-migration took place, because we needed hands and we needed muscle for the war. Well then, the poor who had been on the cotton field was released, but he was in the North. But now there is no step out of poverty. We are -- We have no other step out of poverty but welfare, which is so highly condemned, so criticized, so punitive in our society. It is one of the most degradating systems that has ever been perpetuated on a people, because it says you are wrong until you can prove yourself right. You can only have the minimal substance, you can have no dreams. You can't like nice shirts and nice ties. You can only subsist, and that usually on corn meal and minimal things, and I don't blame the welfare system, I blame the mentality of America, which permits the kind of welfare legislation in the state Again, the whole welfare system is premised on the idea that you have sinned, you are poor -- That's right. That's why you will be punished. And you've got to prove, you've got to make yourself eligible by conforming. And the minute you start to better yourself, then immediately any kind of help has to be removed from you, so keep yourself "un-bettered," if I can coin a phrase, so the poor, really, we must look into ourselves because we are from the poor. We are poor stock. We are, we are from Europe, and we have come over, we are from the poor, and this is one of the reasons we're so sensitive to the poor, because our parents taught us that was the worst thing in the world. Of course. They had, they felt lack of sense of personal worth. That's right. And only when they became personally worthy is when they made it. That's right. That's right. And when they could have the material, the objective material things to show that they were not dependent upon others. And so that to have a house and to have a car and to see that their children had an education so that their children could -- Why in America do we have our children get an education, not that they develop as a person to the fullness of this wonderful soul God has given them, but they can get a better job? And so a boy who goes to Harvard has a better chance of getting a better job than a boy who goes to a local small local college. So parents make great sacrifices to get their kids into Harvard. Why? That they want him to develop more fully as a man? Naw, they want him to get a better job. You know, a discovery was made by one of the teachers who lives at Ecumenical Institute, not too far from where you are, Judy Huff, I call her in the book, husband's a young minister, she's teaching at Marshall High, which is 99.99 percent Black. And she says many of the young teachers find it far more exciting and challenging than teaching in a suburban school. She says, "There's less cheating, for one thing, at a ghetto school than there is in a suburban school. There's less need to get that as the, that of getting ahead." In other words, the bright kids, nobody cheats from. That's right. And the other thing is, this matter, they haven't got the same value set up as the kid in the suburbs, "I'm going to make it, no matter what." You know? The grade'll do it. That's right. And all I have to do is get the grade and serve the ideals of my parents and have the material things, and what I am as a person doesn't really have that much importance. So your -- Aren't you, Sister Mary William is our guest, Sister Mary William of Marillac House, that this matter of "culturally deprived," who is culturally deprived? That's a good question. I think that I've lived in a so-called ghetto for 13 years, and I guess a lot of people would say I'm culturally deprived. I got a master's degree. But we were kidding before, they said something about taping a symphony and I said, "What's a symphony?" I really do know what a symphony is, I really do, but that's not part of my environment. I don't deal in terms of symphonies. I deal in terms of survival. I deal with people who, if they have today's food and this week's rent, life is good, and takes all their human resources to get these things. Would you say then that they are culturally deprived? I don't know if they really are, I don't know if this -- I'm not, I would never canonize poverty. Now, I was curious when I said that, I was being ironic, too, isn't someone, a young white kid living in Marquette Park or Cicero culturally deprived, or the child who lives in Glencoe, or whoever he may be, who is taught that he is, you know, definitely of another class, superior. Isn't there a cultural deprivation? Yes, and you see, one of the -- The greatest depriva-- We are a deprived people, because the cross-section of America as you have so well said, is such a rich thing. The Negro, the poor Negro, has his stamina which perhaps the kid out in Glencoe really needs to experience, and the youngster down in our ghetto needs to experience the aspiration and the intolerance of failure which is a good thing from the kid in Glencoe. But we've so bagged ourselves, we so cut ourselves off from each other, this is wherein our great deprivation comes from. It isn't that we don't lack richness in our society, is we so come -- It's like having wonderful ingredients: Good eggs, good butter, good flour, but keeping it all in its bags and boxes and not letting it mix with each other. You're never really going to produce that wonderful angel food cake. Well, we've done this in our -- We're afraid. One of the eggs we're afraid to mix in with the flour, you know, because they might lose their identity. How do you, we'll ask you more about Marillac House itself, and -- Right now it's a mess. It's a menace. A mess! Oh, it's a mess! I thought a, well, it's a menace, too, I imagine. It's a mess, too. It's a menace, too, and it's a mess most of the time. I really can't say it's just now. It's like Noah's Ark, Studs. We have two of everything, and I think we have three of a few things. It's a settlement house. In what manner is it a mess? Well, you know when you're going to say, "I will stand and be ready to respond to need," it's not an orderly way to live, because then you know who's calling the shots? The people who have the need, not some preconceived program developed by sociologists, you know, and approved with a federal grant of a couple of thou -- Million with a triplicate copy having been sent in to justify everything. It's when the people come in and say, "Today, we need this." And so we develop a program to take care of that need. You know, you said something that, again, fascinated me, you said, "Not an orderly way," this word "order," whether it's law and order or order, you know. I guess the most orderly state is death, isn't it? Death is the most orderly state there is, isn't No, no. No? No, I disagree with you. The most orderly state in the criteria for all order must be love. Oh, I was -- We're speaking in two different wavelengths here. All right. Get the feeling tone, get the feeling tone. There's a phrase here that, I think Dr. King used, a creative disorder. That's right. I'm talking about order as used by the establishment. That's right. Status quo, keep things the way we are. Be sure we're calling the shots. We set the value system 'Cause I was afraid I was getting into a theological argument with Sister Mary William. That was, go ahead. No, but I wanted to get that in, because people are afraid to operate on love. They have to operate on what costs most, or what costs least, or what achieves those things, where the power, you know, we're so power-crazy in our country. That's one of the reasons why people want good jobs, so they can be in a power position, so they can call shots, you know. I wonder if we would say, "Look, all I want to do is really serve, and I don't care whether I get paid for it or not." Yet isn't power within an individual? And if we could perhaps even use this phrase "Black power" for a moment, the creative aspects of it, power within a person. Don't you feel that the violence that comes out of people who are power-less and thus frustrated? That's right. When a person feels powerful, or has a voice in his community, then there is far less violence. That's right. And when a person feels that he can really govern his own life and his family, that he really has his hand on the till of his own ship, if I can say this, then he is much less prone to destruction of that which is around him and destruction of himself. You know the riots that are taking place, people are destroying their own neighborhood, and when you sit and listen to young and old, they keep saying, "It doesn't make sense, Sister. It doesn't make sense. They're, we're destroying our own neighborhood." This one teen, who was, I was quite surprised she was not looting Friday night when all of the thing broke loose, and she knew I was surprised, too, and she laughed at me. We were sitting there, watching a looting take place across the street at a little store and she said, "Now, you know, Sister, this doesn't make sense." She said, "When they killed Kennedy, the white people didn't go out and destroy their neighborhood." She said, "But what can you do, what can you do when you pain the way our people pain?" She said, "It's not that everybody backed Dr. King, but at least he was a voice, he was somebody that the establishment recognized and now they've taken even him. Who will they recognize?" Isn't it also true, ironically true, that when property is destroyed and the establishment looks around, not when man is, when property is, and suddenly there is the fear is, gee, the property is being destroyed. And maybe Congress, maybe the city fathers, I use the word small F for the city fathers in this case, you know, but take action, isn't that the ironic aspect, too? It is, and it's ironic in this much, that I can say this, Studs, thousands of kids have been and destroyed in that neighborhood for eight years. Seven out of every 10 kids get dropped out or pushed out of high school in that neighborhood. And you know, there's been no big wave of white sympathy or about that. And isn't that much more a destruction than the burning of a shoe store? Isn't that the phrase, called institutional, institutional racism, the institutional destruction of lives of people, the very birth, the violence, violated the very day they're born. Now here again, the "they," I speak now of the have-not people. I think, too. And in this Kerner's report, you know, the report on the riots brought this out, that our greatest problem, our greatest challenge, is not programs but it's attitudes, and attitudes exist in individuals and it's luxurious to work with on an individual basis. We want to do everything mass, in mass. But you don't change attitudes by mass interpretation, but rather on an individual basis. And the term "they," whether I'm talking to a group of white people, then I know they're referring to our people in our community, or whether I'm talking to a group of block club people or a group of teens around Marillac House, and they -- It's funny, they use the same term for each other, "they." And last year I remember giving a talk and asking, the wouldn't it be great by the end of the summer if we could have eliminated that pronoun "they," and think in terms of "we." How did you, now if we could come, you said your mother a moment ago, your mother had some disagreement with you, quite obviously, about life in the big city. Well, I -- She doesn't, really. She's a darling Irish woman who came over from Tipperary and she's the essence of refinement and lace-curtain Irish, and so was my father. We were raised in a very conservative neighborhood, which -- And you know, we didn't realize it was conservative. The same neighbors are still living in the houses where -- They were living there when I was born. And the idea was that you got a good education. You lived your faith fully. You did well and bettered yourself. In other words, you had to live in a better neighborhood than you and the parents were now living in, but it was a nice neighborhood, and you kept to yourself and you kept your dignity and you weren't dependent upon anybody. But I think -- And then, I don't know why, they produced me and that was really, you know, I guess there's always one in every crowd, in every litter. Well, I was it. And when I was four years old, I had two -- An older brother and a sister, and then a younger brother, and we went up to my uncle, who was a pastor in a small town in Iowa, and his housekeeper made the best sugar cookies I've ever tasted in my life, Studs. So my mother said, now I was not to go and ask for any more sugar cookies. So see, I had a problem. I liked sugar cookies. I wanted sugar cookies. I would not disobey my mother, and I had enough of that good old Irish Catholic fear in me. But I spent most of my life figuring out how to obey and get around her. And she spent most of her life being around the corner when I came around her. So anyhow, and then a hobo, a gentleman of the road showed up, and the housekeeper gave him a sandwich and four butter cookies and a cup of coffee, and he sat on the pump, you know, how a stoop around the pump? So, four-year-old Annie here says, "Aha!" So I went over and I sat next to him and I told him it was a nice day, wasn't it. And then he said, yes, and I can remember he had a beard and I wouldn't, you know, a four-year-old, you don't -- But I can remember the beard because I hadn't seen men with beards. But anyhow, we began to talk and I began to praise the butter cookies. So he gave me two. So my mother looked out the window and here was her darling daughter sitting next to the gentleman of the road consuming butter cookies so you could be obedient and still get around things. And I guess this has been sort of my way of life. You ask and I know a lot of people say, "Why did you become a sister?" Well, I never thought I could. You see, the traditional was the religious who went in and who prayed a lot and who was very obedient and who was very conforming. And I went to school to sisters and they were very nice, and very refined, and very dedicated, and they kind of disappeared at three o'clock, you know, and then at eight o'clock the next morning, they appeared again. The fact that they had a life together was something that was a mystery. And although I had visited in convents, because I had aunts who were sisters, the whole idea, you know, wasn't so -- But this was the only way, being a sister was the only way, that I could fulfill something that had been brought into my life. I had tremendous parents, Studs, and they loved each other deeply. I can remember asking my father one time why he loved me, and he said, "Because you're the manifestation of my mother -- of mother's and my love." And I thought, they love so much and so deep and so practically, they really did. They didn't say it a lot. They lived their love for us. And I thought, "I have been loved. Now, how can I communicate this love with many others?" And if I were, if I married and had four or five children to myself, that would be a husband and four or five children, you know, and that would be my center and I would do it, but somehow or other that wasn't enough, and I wanted to love many, many people. And the way I could do it, and really do it practically, was by becoming a religious. You see, my mother and father were very good and very close to God and I didn't become a sister because I thought that would bring me closer to God, because they were they were so close to God. But that this was the way I was going to love many people. So when I was 15, a priest asked me about it and I laughed, I said I wasn't the type, and he said, "There is no type," and so I made up my mind then. Well, then the problem was convincing people, because when I told my father and mother, we were at the supper table and I said, "I want to be a sister." And my father said, "Yes, pass the biscuits." He really -- They weren't impressed, because they felt that I'd probably go in the community to be [unintelligible] and, you know, in two weeks things wouldn't go the way I wanted and I'd be home. That -- And when I graduated from high school I said "Well, now let's go," I wanted to be a sister, and my mother had given me good advice, though, she said, "Pray over it because it's a grace and don't talk about it." She said, "If you're normal now, a normal girl and you're a good student and so on, when the time comes to be a sister, you'll be a good sister, too." But I think that was good advice. And then my father was just a darling and he said, "Let me give you one piece of advice, Dolly." He used to call me Dolly. He said, "When you're down, don't ask yourself." He said, "When everything's going the way you want it, say now, do I want to be a sister?" And I can remember being on the top of the Chase Hotel in St. Louis and Hildegarde was there, and I was on the dance floor and I thought, now this is, you know, I -- This is really it, this is about it, and I had a real nice date and I was -- We had a convertible, I remember, and the top was down, and that was the thing in the day. And I said, "All right, now. Do you want to be a sister?" And I said, "Yes, I want to be a sister." And I was convinced and I came into the community, the Daughters of Charity, who were founded 300 years ago to serve the poor, and St. Vincent de Paul was a very practical man. At -- Nuns at that time were not serving the needs of the people. They were cloistered, and the poor had no one to serve them. So he took some good-willed little girls who wanted to really serve them, who wanted to love many people. I guess that's why he took me, too. And he had Louise de Marillac train them and they are very simple. You see, we're not nuns, we're sisters. You never take final vows. But the idea was that we take a fourth vow of service of the poor and for 300 years we have, and there's 43,000 of us all over the world. We have a tremendous tradition. So that I came into the community and I was trained to serve the poor. And that's for, but not in the sense of a paternalistic kind of a way. We are the servants of the poor -- Can I read you something? Please. Have we got time? Sure. This -- St. Vincent said this to Sister Jean, a young sister before she went to her first mission to the poor. And this is taken from a picture, "Monsieur Vincent," the movie, but this is very typical and this is something that we I hope, I think live today. "You will soon learn that charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and a basket of bread, but you must keep your gentleness and your smile. It's not enough to give soup and bread. The rich can do that. You are a little servant of the poor, the maid of charity, always smiling and in a good humor. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting, as you'll see. But the uglier and dirtier they are and the more unjust and bitter, the more you must give them of your love. It's only because of your love, only your love that the poor will forgive you the bread you give them." And this is a spirit in which the Daughters of Charity work. And this is the spirit in which I have worked. But something has happened here with you and with your colleagues at Marillac House and certain sisters like you. There are sisters and sisters and orders and orders, you know, you challenge the establishment, now you see. This is the thing, you see. Christ did too, though, you know. He kind of went on after the establishment a few times, because you see, you must be free, be really free within yourself. Your commitment is to God, not to any power structure, and you must often stand for that which you believe is the Christ-like, the [theo?] reason for doing things, and if it isn't the going song, if it isn't the accepted thing, that's too bad and crucifixions still take place, you know, in various kinds of forms, but the idea of the whole thing is this: That God, the people of God, look at the way the Jewish people suffered and yet they had to believe that God called them as His people, and we as Christians feel that we are part of this. This is part of our inheritance, that we are part of the people of God and that we are called to treat everyone as God's children. We wouldn't have riots, Martin Luther King wouldn't have been shot, nor would have John F. Kennedy, if that for which we have been called were lived in people's hearts. It's mouthed but it is not lived. Of course, we know during the Sunday of Martin Luther King's death, a great deal of honeyed words, some meant, some not meant, were said over all the mass media, as some young minister said, he never heard so much hypocrisy in his life. As one person said as they heard a very prominent person of our city giving a eulogy from the city council on Martin Luther King -- I wonder who that -- I wonder who that would be. I don't know, the kid didn't tell me, he just quoted his reaction, and I wasn't one to press. He said, "Listen to that cat. Two years ago, when King came in here and tried to explain to him how we were painin', how we, we Black people were painin', he treated him like a boob." He said, "He couldn't help it then," he said, "but why does he have to stand up now with all that garbage?" You know? And this is the feeling in the heart: If he stood up, they can almost tolerate the man who is sticking to his guns and still condemning the Black man. They would rather face the outright racist, the outright racist. That's right. Than the -- They can't stand the "not for real." You know, because being for real means a lot, and that's with us. It was interesting, over the weekend, going over to Madison, you know, 25, 26, 2700 Madison on Saturday when much of the looting was still going on. And to have a half-intoxicated not only with liquor, but with frustration and violence, a young adult man turn on you and say, "You're white, I hate you, go home before I have to kill you," and serve as that, having a white face so he could get it out of his system. Finally, he turned around, he says, "Please go home." And I said, "I'm going home, I'm just trying to get out of here. I came to see --" I said, "We heard a family was burned out and we're trying to find them to get them housing." And he says, "Now, what you doing that for?" I said, "'Cause they're burned out and they got kids." He says, "Yeah, but then that makes you nice." And I said, "I'm sorry about that, man," I said, "I can't do anything about being white, but I sure can do something about being nice." Or about being human. That's right. And he just went down the street shaking his head. He was shaking his head, that man was powerless. That's right. That's That's